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PREFACE. 


This little tale was written between two and three 
years ago, in the hope that it might help to call the 
attention of wiser and better men than I am, to the 
questions which are now agitating the minds of the 
rising generation, and to the absolute necessity of 
solving them at once and earnestly, unless we would 
see the faith of our forefathers crumble away beneath 
the combined influence of new truths which are fancied 
to be incompatible with it, and new mistakes as to its 
real essence. That this can be done, I believe and 
know : if I had not believed it, I would never have 
put pen to paper on the subject. 

I believe that the ancient Creed, the eternal Gospel, 
will stand, and conquer, and prove its might in this 
age, as it has in every other for eighteen hundred 
years, by claiming, and subduing, and organizing those 
young anarchic forces, which now, unconscious of their 
parentage, rebel against Him to whom they owe their 
being. 

But for the time being, the young men and women 
of our day are fast parting from their parents and each 
Other ; the more thoughtful are wandering either fo* 


IV 


PREFACE. 


ward Eome, toward sheer materialism, or toward an 
unchristian and unphilosophic spiritualist Epicurism 
which, in my eyes, is the worst evil spirit of the three, 
precisely because it looks at first sight most like an 
angel of light. The mass, again, are fancying that 
they are still adhering to the old creeds, the old 
church, to the honored patriarchs of English Protes- 
tantism. I wish I could agree with them in their be- 
lief about themselves. To me they seem — -with a small 
sprinkling of those noble and cheering exceptions to 
popular error which are to be found in every age of 
Christ’s church — ^to be losing most fearfully and rapidly 
the living spirit of Christianity, and to be, for that very 
reason, clinging all the more convulsively — and who 
can blame them ? — ^to the outward letter of it, whether 
High Church or Evangelical ; unconscious, all the 
while, that they are sinking out of real living belief, 
into that dead self-deceiving belief-in-believing, which 
has been always heretofore, and is becoming in Eng- 
land now, the parent of the most blind, dishonest, and 
pitiless bigotry. 

In the following pages I have attempted to shovvr 
what some at least of the young in these days are 
really thinking and feeling. I know well that my 
sketch is inadequate and partial : I have every reason 
to believe, from the criticisms which I have received 
since its first publication, that it is, as far as it goes, 
correct. I put it as a problem. It would be the 
height of arrogance in me to do more than indicate 
the direction in which I think a solution may be found. 
I fear that my elder readers, may complain that I‘have 
no right to start doubts, without answering them. I 
can only answer, — Would that I had started them! 


PREFACE. 


V 


would that I was not seeing them daily around me, 
under some -form or other, in just the very hearts for 
whom one would most wish the peace and strength 
of a fixed and healthy faith. To the young this book 
can do no harm ; for it will put into their minds little 
but what is there already. To the elder it may do 
good ; for it may teach some of them, as I earnestly 
hope, something of the real, but too often utterly un- 
suspected, state of their own children’s minds ; some- 
thing of the reasons of that calamitous estrangement 
between themselves and those who will succeed them, 
which is often too painfal and oppressive to be con- 
fessed to their own hearts. Whatever amount of ob- 
loquy this book may bring upon me, I shall think 
that a light price to pay, if by it I shall have helped, 
even in a single case, to ‘ turn the hearts of the parents 
to the children, and the hearts of the children to the 
parents, before the great and terrible day of the Lord 
come,’ — as come it surely will, if we persist much 
longer in substituting denunciation for sympathy, in- 
struction for education, and Pharisaism for the Good 
News of the Kingdom of God. 


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CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER PAQK 

I. The Philosophy of Fox-Hunting ... ... 9 

11. Spring Yearnings .... 23 

III. New Actors, and a New Stage 38 

IV. An Inglorious Milton * 64 

V. A Sham is Worse than Nothing 72 

VI. Vogue la Galere 81 

VII. The Drive Home, and what came of it 98 

VIII. Whither? 107 

IX. Harry Verney hears his last Shot fibed . . . .122 

X. ‘ Murder will out,’ and Love too 133 

XI. Thunder-storm the First 155 

XII. Thunder-storm the Second 167 

XIII. The Village Revel 179 

XIV. What’s to be done? .... *. 208 

XV. Deus e Machina 225 

XVI. Once in a Way 249 

XVII. The Valley of the Shadow of Death .... 269 

Epilogue 281 


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YEAST 

^ |Jroblem. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HUNTIls^G. 

As this my story will probably run counter to more than one 
fashion of the day, literary and other, it is prudent to bow to 
those fashions wherever I honestly can ; and therefore to begin 
with a scrap of description. 

The edge of a great fox-cover ; a flat wilderness of low leaf- 
less oaks, fortified by a long dreary thorn-capped clay ditch, 
with sour red water oozing out at every yard ; a broken gate 
leading into a strait w^oodride, ragged with dead grasses and 
black with fallen leaves, the center mashed into a quagmire by 
innumerable horse-hoofs ; some forty red coats, and some four 
black ; a sprinkling of young farmers, resplendent in gold but- 
tons and green ; a pair of sleek drab stable-keepers, showing off 
horses for sale ; the surgeon of the union, in Macintosh and anti- 
gropelos ; two holyday school-boys with trowsers strapped down 
to bursting point, like a penny steamer’s safety-valve ; a mid- 
shipman, the only merry one in the field, bumping about on a 
fretting, sweating hack, with its nose a foot above its ears ; 
and Lancelot Smith, who then kept two good horses, and ‘ rode 
forward,’ as a fine young fellow of three-and-twenty who can 
afford it, and ‘ has nothing else to do,’ has a very good right to 
ride. 


A- 


10 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HUNTING. 


Bui what is a description, without a sketch of the weather 1 
—In these Pantheist days especially, when a hero or heroine’s 
moral state must entirely depend on the barometer, and authors 
talk as if Christians were cabbages, and a man’s soul as well as 
his lungs might be saved by sea-breezes and sunshine, or his 
character developed by wearing guano in his shoes, and train- 
ing himself against a south wall — we must have a weather- 
description, though, as I shall presently show, one in flat con- 
tradiction of the popular theory. Luckily for our information, 
Lancelot was very much given to watch both the weather and 
himself, and had indeed, while in his teens, combined the two 
in a sort of soul-almanac on the principles just mentioned — 
somewhat in this style : — 

Monday^ 2\st . — Wind S. W., bright sun, mercury at 30^ 
inches. Felt my heart expanded toward the universe. Organs 
of veneration and benevolence pleasingly excited ; and gave a 
shilling to a tramp. An inexpressible joy bounded through 
every vein, and the soft air breathed purity and self-sacrifice 
through my soul. As I watched the beetles, those children of 
the sun, who, as divine Shelley says, ‘ laden with light and odor, 
pass over the gleam of the living grass,’ I gained an Eden- 
glimpse of the pleasures of virtue. 

N. B. Found the tramp drunk in a ditch. I could not 
have degraded myself on such a day — ah ! how could he ? • 

^ Tuesday^ 22d . — Barometer rapidly falling. Heavy clouds 
in the south-east. My heart sank into gloomy forebodings. 
Bead Manfred^ and doubted whether I should live long. The 
leaden weight of destiny seemed to crush down my aching fore- 
head, till the thunder-storm burst, and peace was restored to my 
troubled soul.” 

This was very bad ; but to do justice to Lancelot, he had 
grown out of it at the time when my story begins. He was 
now in the fifth act of his ‘ Werterean’ stage, that sentimental 
measles which all clever men must catch once in their Jives, and 
which, generally, like the physical measles, if taken early, settles 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HUNTING. 


11 


their constitution for good or evil ; if taken late, goes far to- 
^vard killing them. Lancelot had found Byron and Shelley 
pall on his taste, and commenced devouring Bulwer and wor- 
shiping Ernest Maltravers, He had left Bulwer for old bal- 
lads and romances, and Mr. Carlyle’s reviews ; was next alter* 
nately chivalry-mad, and Germany-mad ; was now reading 
Ijard at physical science ; and on the whole trying to become a 
great man, without any very clear notion of what a great man 
ought to be. Real education he never had had. Bred up at 
home under his father, a rich merchant, he had gone to college 
with a large stock of general information, and a particular 
mania for dried plants, fossils, butterflies, and sketching, and 
some such creed as this : — 

That he was very clever. 

That he ought to make his fortune. 

That a great many things were very pleasant — beautiful 
things among the rest. 

That it was a fine thing to be ‘ superior,’ gentlemanlike, gen- 
erous, and courageous. 

That a man ought to be religious. 

And left college with a good smattering of classics and math- 
ematics, picked up in the intervals of boat-racing and hunting, 
and much the same creed as he brought with him, except in 
regard to the last article. The scenery-and-natural-history 
mania was now somewhat at a discount. He had discovered 
a new^natural object, including in itself all — more than all — 
yet found beauties and wonders — woman ! 

Draw, draw the vail and weep, guardian angel ! if such there 
be. What was to be expected ? Pleasant things were pleasant 
— there was no doubt of that, whatever else might be doubtful. 
He had read Byron by stealth ; he had been flogged into read- 
ing Ovid and Tibullus ; and commanded by his private tutor to 
read Martial and Juvenal ‘ for the improvement of his style.’ 
All conversation on the subject of love had been prudishly 
avoided, as* usual, by his parents and teacher. The parts of 


12 


PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HUNTING. 


the Bible which spoke of it had been always kept out of his 
sight. Love had been to him, practically, ground tabooed and 
‘ carnal.’ What was to be expected ? Just what happened — 
if woman’s beauty had nothing holy in it, why should his fond- 
ness for it ? Just what happens everyday — that he had to 
sow his wdld oats for himself, and eat the fruit thereof, and the 
dirt thereof also. 

0 fathers ! fathers ! and you, clergymen, who monopolize 
education ! either tell boys the truth about love, or do not put 
into their hands, without note or comment, the foul devil’s lies 
about it, which make up the mass of the Latin poets — and then 
go, fresh from teaching Juvenal and Ovid, to declaim at Exeter 
Hall against poor Peter Dens’ well-meaning prurience ! Had 
we not better take the beam out of our own eye before we 
meddle with the mote in the Jesuit’s ? 

But where is my description of the weather all this time ? 

1 cannot, I am sorry to say, give any very cheerful account 
of the weather that day. But what matter ? Are Englishmen 
hedge-gnats, who only take their sport when the sun shines 1 
Is it not, on the contrary, symbolical of our national character, 
that almost all our field amusements are wintry ones ? Our 
fowling, our hunting, our punt-shooting (pastime for Hymer 
himself and the frost giants) — our golf and skating, — our very 
cricket and boat-racing, and jack and grayling fishing, carried 
on till we are fairly frozen out. We are a stern people, and 
winter suits us. Nature then retires modestly into the back- 
ground, and spares us the obtrusive glitter of summer, leaving 
us to think and work ; and therefore it happens that in England, 
it may be taken as a general rule, that whenever all the rest 
of the world is in-doors, we are out and busy, and on the whole, 
the worse the day, the better the deed. 

The weather that day, the first day Lancelot ever saw his 
beloved, was truly national. A silent, dim, distanceless, steam- 
ing, rotting day in March. The last brown oak -leaf, which had 
stood out the winter’s frost, spun and quivered plump down. 


PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HUNTING. 


13 


and then lay ; as if ashamed to have broken for a moment the 
ghastly stillness, like an awkward guest at a great dumb dinner- 
party. A cold suck of wind just proved its existence, by tooth- 
aches on the north side of all faces. The spiders, having been 
weather-bewitched the night before, had unanimously agreed to 
cover every brake and brier with gossamer-cradles, and never a 
fly to be caught in them ; like Manchester cotton-spinners madly 
glutting the markets in the teeth of ‘ no demand.’ The steam 
crawled out of the dank turf, and reeked off the flanks and nos- 
trils of the shivering horses, and clung with clammy paws to 
frosted hats and dripping boughs. — A soulless, skyless, catarrhal 
day, as if that bustling dowager, old mother Earth — what with 
match-making in spring, and fetes champetres in summer, and 
dinner-giving in autumn — was fairly worn out, and put to bed 
with the influenza, under wet blankets and the cold-water cure. 

There sat Lancelot by the cover-side, his knees aching with 
cold and wet, thanking his stars that he was not one of the 
whippers-in who were lashing about in the dripping cover, lay- 
ing up for themselves, in catering for the amusement of their 
betters, a probable old age of bed-ridden torture, in the form of 
rheumatic gout. Not that he was at all happy — indeed, he 
had no reason to be so ; for first the hounds would not find ; 
next, he had left half-finished at home a review article on the 
Silurian System, which he had solemnly promised an abject 
and beseeching editor to send to post that night ; next, he was 
on the windward side of the cover, and dare not light a cigar; 
and lastly, his mucous membrane in general was not in the 
happiest condition, seeing that he had been dining the evening 
before with Mr. Vaurien of Rottenpalings, a young gentleman of 
a convivial and melodious turn of mind, who sang — and played 
also — as singing men are wont — in more senses than one, and 
had ‘ ladies and gentlemen’ down from town to stay with him ; 
and they sang and played too ; and so somehow between vingt- 
un and champagne-punch, Lancelot had not arrived at home 
till seven o’clock that morning, and was in a fit state to appre- 


14 


PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HUNTING. 


date the feelings of our grandfathers, when after the third bottle 
of port, they used to put the black silk tights into their pocket, 
slip on the leathers and boots, and ride the crop-tailed hack 
thirt}^ miles on a winter’s night, to meet the hounds in the next 
county by ten in the morning. They are ‘gone down to 
Hades, even many stalwart souls of heroes,’ with John Warde 
of Squerries at their head — the fathers of the men who con- 
quered at Waterloo ; and we their degenerate grandsons are 
left instead, with puny arms, and polished leather boots, and a 
considerable taint of hereditary disease, to sit in club-houses, 
and celebrate the progress of the species. 

Whether Lancelot or his horse, under these depressing cir- 
cumstances, fell asleep ; or wdiether thoughts pertaining to such 
a life, and its fitness for a clever and ardent young fellow in the 
nineteenth century, became gradually too painful, and had to 
be peremptorily shaken off, this deponent sayeth not ; but cer 
tainly, after five-and-thirty minutes of idleness and shivering, 
Lancelot opened his eyes wdth a sudden start, and struck spurs 
into his hunter without due cause shown ; whereat Shiver- the 
Timbers, who was no Griselda in temper — (Lancelot had bought 
him out of the Pytchley for half his value, as unridably vicious, 
when he had killed a groom, and fallen backward on a rough- 
rider, the first season after he came up from Horncastle) — re- 
sponded by a furious kick or two, threw his head up, put his 
foot into a drain, and sprawled down all but on his nose, pitch- 
ing Lancelot unawares shamefully on the pommel of his saddle. 
A certain fatality, by-the-by, had lately attended all Lancelot’s 
efforts to shine ; he never bought a new coat without tearing it 
mysteriously next day, or tried to make a joke without burst- 
ing out coughing in the middle .... and now the whole 
field were looking on at his mishap ; between disgust and the 
start he turned almost sick, and felt the blood rush into his 
cheeks and forehead as he heard a shout of coarse jovial laugh- 
ter burst out close to him, and the old master of the hounds, 
Squire Lavington, roar aloud, — 


PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HUNTING. 


15 


^ A pretty sportsman you are, Mr. Smith, to fall asleep by the 
cover-side, and let your horse down — and your pockets, too ! 
What’s that book on the ground ? Sapping and studying still ? 
I let nobody come out with my hounds with their pocket full 
of learning. Hand it up here, Tom ; we’ll see what it is. 
French, as 1 am no scholar ! Translate for us. Colonel Brace- 
bridge !’ 

And, amid shouts of laughter, the gay Guardsman read 
out, — 

‘St. Francis de Sales: Introduction to a Devout Life^ 

Poor Lancelot ! Wishing himself fathoms under-ground, 
ashamed of his book, still more ashamed of himself for his 
shame, he had to sit there ten physical seconds, or spiritual 
years, while the colonel solemnly returned him the book, com- 
plimenting him on the proofs of its purifying influence which 
he had given the night before, in helping to throw the turn- 
pike-gate into the river. 

But ‘ all things do end’ and so did this ; and the silence of 
the hounds also ; and a faint but knowing whimper drove St. 
Francis out of all heads, and Lancelot began to stalk slowly 
with a dozen horsemen up the wood-ride, to a fitful accompani- 
ment of wandering hound-music, where the choristers were as 
invisible as nightingales among the thick cover. And hark ! 
just as the book was returned to his pocket, the sweet hubbub 
suddenly crashed out into one jubilant shriek, and then swept 
away fainter and fainter among the trees. The walk became a 
trot — the trot a canter. Then a faint melancholy shout at a 
distance, answered by a ‘ Stole away !’ from the fields ; a dole- 
ful ‘ toot’ of the horn ; the dull thunder of many horsehoofs 
rolling along the further wood-side. Then red coats, flashing 
like sparks of fire across the gray gap of mist at the ride’s- 
mouth • then a whipper-in, bringing up a belated hound, burst 
into the path-way, smashing and plunging, wiih shut eyes, 
through ash-saplings and hassock grass ; then a fat farmer, 
sedulously pounding through the mud, was overtaken and be- 


10 


PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HUNTING. 


spattered in spite of all his struggles ; — until the line streamed 
out into the wide rushy pasture, startling up pewits and curlews, 
as horsemen poured in from every side, and cunning old farm- 
ers rode off at inexplicable angles to some well-known haunts 
of pug ; and right a-head, chiming and jangling sweet madness^ 
the dappled pack glanced and wavered through the vail of soft 
gray mist. 

‘ What’s the use of this hurry ?’ growled Lancelot. ‘ They 
will be all back again. I never have the luck to see a run.’ 

But, no ; on and on — down the wind and down the vale ; 
and the canter became a gallop, and the gallop a long straining 
stride ; and a hundred horse-hoofs crackled like flame among 
the stubbles, and thundered fetlock-deep along the heavy 
meadows ; and every fence thinned the cavalcade, till the mad- 
ness began to stir all bloods, and with grim earnest silent faces, 
the initiated few settled themselves to their work, and with the 
colonel and Lancelot at their head, ‘ took their pleasure sadly, 
after the manner of their nation,’ as old Froissart has it. 

^ ^ 

‘ Thorough bush, through brier, 

Thorough park, through pale 

till the rolling grass-lands spread out into flat black open fallows^ 
crossed with grassy baulks, and here and there a long melan- 
choly line of tall elms, while before them the high chalk ranges 
gleamed above the mist like a vast wall of emerald enameled 
with snow, and the winding river glittering at their feet. 

‘ A polite fox !’ observed the colonel. ‘ He’s leading the 
squire straight home to Whitford, just in time for dinner.’ 

^ ^ 

They were in the last meadow, with the stream before them. 

A line of struggling heads in the swollen and milky current 
showed the hounds’ opinion of Eeynard’s course. The sports- 
men galloped off toward the nearest bridge. Bracebridge^ 
looked back at Lancelot, who had been keeping by his side in 


PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HlTNTING. 


17 


sulky rivalry, following him successfully through all manner of 
desperate places, and more and more angry with himself and 
the guiltless colonel, because he only followed, while the col- 
onel’s quicker and unembarrassed wit, which lived wholly in 
the present moment, saw long before Lancelot ‘how to cut out 
his w’ork’ in every field. 

‘ I shan’t go round,’ quietly observed the colonel. 

‘Do you fancy I shall?’ growled Lancelot, who took for 
granted — poor thin-skinned soul ! — that the words were meant 
as a hit at himself. 

‘ You’re a brace of geese,’ politely observed the old squire ; ' 
‘ and you’ll find it out in rheumatic fever. There — ‘ one fool 
makes many !’ You’ll kill Smith before you’re done, colonel 1’ 
And the old man wheeled away up the meadow, as Brace- 
bridge shouted after him, — 

‘ Oh, he’ll make a fine rider — ^in time !’ 

* In time 1’ Lancelot could have knocked the unsuspecting 
colonel down for the word. It just expressed the contrast, 
which had fretted him ever since he began to hunt with the 
Whitford Priors hounds. The colonel’s long practice and con- 
summate skill in all he took in hand, — his experience of all so- 
ciety, from the prairie Indian to Crockford’s, from the prize-ring 
to the continental courts, — his varied and ready store of infor- 
mation and anecdote, — the harmony and completeness of the 
man, — his consistency with his own small ideal, and his conse- 
quent apparent superiority everywhere and in every thing to the 
huge awkward Titan-cub, who, though immeasurably beyond 
Bracebridge in intellect and heart, was still in a state of con- 
vulsive dyspepsia, ‘swallowing formulae,’ and daily well-nigh 
choked ; diseased throughout with that morbid self-conscious- 
ness and lust of praise, for which God prepares, with his elect, 
a bitter cure. Alas, poor Lancelot ! an unlicked bear, ‘ with all 
his sorrows before him !’ — 

‘Come along,’ quoth Bracebridge, between snatches of a 
tune, his coolness maddening Lancelot. Old Lavington will 


18 


PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HUNTINO. 


find US dry clothes, a bottle of port, and a brace of charming 
daughters at the Priory. In with you, little Mustang of the 
prairie ! Neck or nothing !’ — 

And in an instant the small wiry American, and the huge 
llorncastle-bred hunter, were wallowing and staggering in the 
yeasty stream, till they floated into a deep reach, and swam 
steadily down to a low place in the bank. They crossed the 
stream, passed the Priory shrubberies, leaped the gate into the 
park, and then on and upward, called by the unseen Ariel’s 
music before them. — Up, into the hills ; past white crumbling 
chalk-pits, fringed with feathered juniper and tottering ashes, 
their floors strewed with knolls of fallen soil and vegetation, 
f&e wooded islets in a sea of milk. — ^Up, between steep ridges 
of turf, crested with black fir-woods and silver beech, and here 
and there a huge yew standing out alone, the advanced sentry 
of the forest, with its luscious fret- work of green velvet, like a 
mountain of Gothic spires and pinnacles, all glittering and 
steaming as the sun drank up the dew-drops. The lark sprang 
upward into song, and called merrily to the new-opened sun- 
beams, while the wreaths and flakes of mist lingered reluctantly 
about the hollows, and clung with dewy fingers to every knoll 
and belt of pine. — Up, into the labyrinthine bosom of the hills, 
— ^but who can describe them ? Is not all nature indescribable ? 
every leaf infinite and transcendental ? How much more those 
mighty downs, with their enormous sheets of spotless turf, 
where the dizzy eye loses all standard of size and distance be- 
fore the awful simplicity, the delicate vastness, of those grand 
curves and swells, soft as the outlines of a Greek Venus, as if 
the great goddess mother Hertha had laid herself down among 
the hills to sleep, her Titan limbs wrapt in a thin vail of silvery 
green. 

Up, into a vast amphitheater of sward, whose walls banked 
out the narrow sky above. And here, in the focus of the huge 
ring, an object appeared which stirred strange melancholy in 
Lancelot, — a little chapel, ivy-grown, girded with a few yews, 


PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HUNTING. 


19 


and elders, and grassy graves. A climbing rose over tbe porch, 
and iron railings round the church-yard, told of human care *, 
and from the grave-yard itself burst up one of those noble 
springs known as winterbournes in the chalk-ranges, which, 
awakened in autumn from the abysses to which it had shrunk 
during the summer’s drought, was hurrying down upon its six 
months’ course, a broad sheet of oily silver, over a temporary 
channel of smooth green sward. 

The hounds had checked in the woods behind ; now they 
poured down the hillside, so close together ‘ that you might 
have covered them with a sheet,’ straight for the little 
chapel. 

A saddened tone of feeling spread itself through Lancelot’s 
heart. There were the everlasting hills around, even as they 
had grown and grown for countless ages, beneath the still 
depths of the primeval chalk ocean, in the milky youth of this 
great English land. And here was he, the insect of a day, fox- 
hunting upon them! He felt ashamed, and more ashamed 
when the inner voice whispered, — ‘ Fox-hunting is not the 
shame — thou art the shame. If thou art the insect of a day, 
it is thy sin that thou art one.’ 

And his sadness, foolish as it may seem, grew as he watched 
a brown speck fleet rapidly up the opposite hill, and heard a 
gay view-halloo burst from the colonel at his side. The chase 
lost its charm for him the moment the game was seen. Then 
vanished that mysterious delight of pursuing an invisible object, 
which gives to hunting and fishing their unutterable and al- 
most spiritual charm ; which made Shakspeare a nightly 
poacher ; Davy and Chantrey the patriarchs of fly-fishing ; by 
which the twelve-foot rod is transfigured into an enchanter’s 
wand, potent over the unseen wonders of the water-world, to 
‘ call up spirits from the vasty deep,’ which will really ‘ come if 
you do call for them’ — at least if the conjuration be orthodox — 
and they there. That spell was broken by the sight of poor 
wearied pug, his once gracefully-floating brush all draggled and 


20 


PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HUNTING. 


drooping, as he toiled up the sheep-paths toward the open down 
above. 

But Lancelot’s sadness reached its crisis, as he met the 
hounds just outside the church-yard. Another moment — they 
had leapt the rails ; and there they swept round under the gray 
wall, leaping and yelling, like Berserk fiends, among the frown- 
ing tombstones, over the cradles of the quiet dead. 

Lancelot shuddered — the thing was not wrong — ‘ it was no 
one’s fault,’ — but there was a ghastly discord in it. Peace and 
strife, time and eternity — the mad noisy flesh, and the silent 
immortal spirit — the frivolous game of life’s outside show, tand 
the terrible earnest of its inward abysses, jarred together with- 
out and within him. He pulled his horse up violently, and 
stood as if rooted to the place, gazing at he knew not what. 

The hounds caught sight of the fox, burst into one frantic 
shriek of joy — and then a sudden and ghastly stillness, as, mute 
and breathless, they toiled up the hillside, gaining on their 
victim at every stride. The patter of the horsehoofs and the 
rattle of rolling flints died away above. Lancelot looked up,’ 
startled at the silence ; laughed aloud, he knew not why, and 
sat, regardless of his pawing and straining horse, still staring at 
the chapel and the graves. 

On a sudden the chapel-door opened, and a figure, timidly 
yet loftily, stepped out without observing him, and, suddenly 
turning round, met him full, face to face, and stood fixed with 
surprise as completely as Lancelot himself. 

That face and figure, and the spirit which spoke through 
them, entered his heart at once, never again to leave it. Her 
features were aquiline and grand, without a shade of harsh- 
ness ; her eyes shone out like twin lakes of still azure, beneath 
a broad marble cliff of polished forehead ; her rich chestnut hair 
rippled downward round the towering neck. With her perfect 
masque, and queenly figure, and earnest upward gaze, she 
might have been the very model from which Raphael conceived 
his glorious St. Catherine — the ideal of the highest womanly 


rHiLosornY of fox-hunting. 


21 


I genius, softened into self-forgetfulness by girlish devotion. She 
: Was simply, almost coarsely dressed ; but a glance told him 
I that she was a lady, by the courtesy of man as well as by the 
will of God. 

I They gazed one moment more at each other — but what is 
time to spirits ? With them, as with their Father, ‘ one day is 
I as a thousand years.’ But that eye- wedlock was cut short the 
next instant by the decided interference of the horse, who, 
thoroughly disgusted at his master’s whole conduct, gave a 
i significant shake of the head, and shamming frightened (as 
both women and horses will do when only cross), commenced a 
! war-dance, which drove Argemono Lavington into the porch, 
and gave the bewildered Lancelot an excuse for dashing madly 
up the hill after his companions. 

‘ What a horribly ugly face !’ said Argemone, to herself ; 
‘ but so clever, and so unhappy !’ 

Blest pity ! true mother of that graceless scamp, young Love, 
who is ashamed of his real pedigree, and swears to this day that 
he is the child of Venus ! — the coxcomb ! 

% % ^ :fc 

[Here, for the sake of the reader, we omit, or rather post- 
pone, a long dissertation on the famous Erototheogonic chorus 
of Aristophanes’s birds, with illustrations taken from all earth 
and heaven, from the Vedas and Prod us to Jacob Boehmen 
and Saint Theresa.] 

‘ The dichotomy of Lancelot’s personality,’ as the Germans 
would call it, returned as he dashed on. His understanding 
was trying to ride, while his spirit was left behind with Arge- 
mone. Hence loose reins and a looser seat. He rolled about 
like a tipsy man, holding on, in fact, far more by his spurs than 
by his knees, to the utter infuriation of Shiver-the-timbers, who 
kicked and snorted over the down like one of Mephistopheles’s 
Demon-steeds. They had mounted the hill — the deer fled be- 
fore them in terror — they neared the park palings. In the 
road beyond them the hounds were just killing their fox, strug- 


22 


PHILOSOPHY OF FOX-HUNTING. 


gling and growling in fierce groups for the red gobbets of fur, 
a panting, steaming ring of horses round them. Half-a-dozen 
voices hailed him as he came up. 

‘Where have you been V ‘ He’ll tumble off!’ ‘ He’s had 
a fall 1’ ‘No, he hasn’t I’ ‘ ’ware hounds, man alive 1’ ‘ He’ll 

break his neck !’ 

‘ He has broken it, at last 1’ shouted the colonel, as Shiver- 
the-timbers rushed at the high pales, out of breath, and blind 
with rage. Lancelot saw and heard nothing till he was 
awakened from his dream by the long heave of the huge brute’s 
shoulder, and the maddening sensation of sweeping through the 
air over the fence. He started, checked the curb, the horse 
threw up his head, fulfilled his name by driving his knees like 
a battering-ram against the pales — the top-bar bent like a 
withe, flew out into a hundred splinters, and man and horse 
rolled over headlong into the hard flint-road. 

For one long sickening second Lancelot watched the blue 
sky between his own knees. Then a crash as if a shell had 
burst in his face — a horrible grind — a sheet of flame — and the 
blackness of night. Did you ever feel it, reader ? 

When he awoke, he found himself lying in bed, with Squire 
Lavington sitting by him. There was real sorrow in the old 
man’s face. ‘ Come to himself!’ and a great joyful oath rolled 
out. ‘ The boldest rider of them all ! I wouldn’t have lost 
him for a dozen ready-made spick-and-span Colonel Brace- 
bridges !’ 

‘ Quite right, squire !’ answered a laughing voice from be- 
hind the curtain. ‘ Smith has a clear two thousand a-year 
and I live by my wits 1’ 


CHAPTER II. 


SPRING YEARNINGS, 

I HEARD a story the other day of our most earnest and 
genial humorist, who is just now proving himself also our most 
earnest and genial novelist. ‘ I like your novel exceedingly,’ 
said a lady ; ‘ the characters are so natural — all but the 
baronet, and he surely is overdrawn : it is impossible to find 
such coarseness in his rank of life !” 

The artist laughed. ‘ And that character,’ said he, ‘ is al- 
most the only exact portrait in the whole book.’ 

So it is. People do not see the strange things which pass 
them every day. ‘ The romance of real life’ is only one to the 
romantic spirit. And then they set up for critics, instead of 
pupils ; as if the artist’s business was not just to see what they 
cannot see — to open their eyes to the harmonies and the dis- 
cords, the miracles and the absurdities, which seem to them 
one uniform gray fog of commonplaces. 

Then let the reader believe, that whatsoever is commonplace 
in my story is my own invention. Whatsoever may seem ex- 
travagant or startling is most likely to be historic fact, else I 
should not have dared to write it down, finding God’s actual 
dealings here much too wonderful to dare to invent many fresh 
ones for myself. 

Lancelot, who had had a severe concussion of the brain and 
a broken leg, kept his bed for a few weeks, and his room for a 
few more. Colonel Bracebridge installed himself at the Priory, 


24 


SPRING YEARNINGS. 


and nursed him with indefatigable good-humor and few thanks. 
He brought Lancelot his breakfast before hunting, described 
the run to him when he returned, read him to sleep, told him 
stories of grizzly bear and bufialo-hunts, made him laugh in 
spite of himself at extempore comic medleys, kept his tables 
covered with flowers from the conservatory, warmed his choco- 
late, and even his bed. Nothing came amiss to him, and he to 
nothing. Lancelot longed at first every hour to be rid of him, 
and eyed him about the room as a bull-dog does the monkey 
who rides him. In his dreams he was Sinbad the Sailor, and 
Bracebridge the Old Man of the Sea ; but he could not hold 
out against the colonel’s merry bustling kindliness, and the al- 
most womanish tenderness of his nursing. The ice thawed 
rapidly ; and one evening it split up altogether, when Brace- 
bridge, who was sitting drawing by Lancelot’s sofa, instead of 
amusing himself with the ladies below, suddenly threw his pen- 
cil into the fire, and broke out a propos de rien — 

* What a strange pair we are. Smith ! I think you just the 
best fellow I ever met, and you hate me like poison — ^you can’t 
deny it.’ 

There was something in the colonel’s tone so utterly different 
from his usual courtly and measured speech, that Lancelot was 
taken completely by surprise, and stammered out, — 

‘ I — — I — no — no. I know I am very foolish — ungrateful. 
But I do hate you,’ he said, with a sudden impulse, ‘and I’ll 
tell you why.’ 

‘ Give me your hand,’ quoth the colonel : ‘ I like that. Now 
we shall see our way with each other, at least.’ 

‘ Because,’ said Lancelot, slowly, ‘ because you are cleverer 
than I, readier than I, superior to me in every point.’ 

The colonel laughed, not quite merrily. Lancelot went on, 
Iiolding down his shaggy brows. 

‘ I am a brute and an ass ! — And yet I do not like to tell you 
so. For if I am an ass, what are you V 
‘Heydays’ 


SPRING YEARNINGS. 


25 


‘ Look here. — I am wasting my time and brains on ribaldr}-, 
but I am worth nothing better — at least, I think so at times ; 
but you, who can do any thing you put your hand to, what 
business have you, in the devil’s name, to be throwing yourself 
away on gimcracks and fox-hunting foolery ? Heavens ! if I 
had your talents. I’d be — I’d make a name for myself before I 
died, if I died to make it.’ 

The colonel griped his hand hard, rose and looked out of the 
window for a few minutes. There was a dead, brooding silence, 
till he turned to Lancelot, — 

‘ Mr. Smith, I thank you for your honesty, but good advice 
may come too late. I am no saint, and God only knows how 
much less of one I may become ; but mark my words, — if you 
are ever tempted by passion, and vanity, and fine ladies, to form 
liaisons^ as the Jezebels call them, snares, and nets, and laby- 
rinths of blind ditches, to keep you down through life, stum- 
bling and groveling, hating yourself and hating the chain to 
which you cling — in that hour pray — pray as if the devil had 
you by the throat, — to Almighty God, to help you out of that 
cursed slough 1 There is nothing else for it ! — pray, I tell you !’ 

There was a terrible earnestness about the guardsman’s face 
which could not be mistaken. Lancelot looked at him for a 
moment, and then dropped his eyes ashamed, as if he had in- 
truded on the speaker’s confidence by witnessing his emotion. 

In a moment the colonel had returned to his smile and his 
polish. ' 

‘ And now, my dear invalid, I must beg your pardon for ser- 
monizing. What do you say to a game of ecarte? We must 
play for love, or we shall excite ourselves, and scandalize Mrs. 
Lavington’s piety.’ And the colonel pulled a pack of cards out 
of his pocket, and, seeing that Lancelot was too thoughtful for 
play, commenced all manner of juggler’s tricks, and chuckled 
over them like any school-boy. 

f ‘ Happy man !’ thought Lancelot, ‘ to have the strength of 
will which can thrust its thoughts away once and for all.’ 

2 


26 


SPRING YEARNINGS. 


No, Lancelot ! more happy are they whom God will not al- 
low to thrust their thouo;hts from them till the bitter draught 
has done its work. 

From that day, however, there was a cordial understanding 
between the two. They never alluded to the subject; but they 
had known the bottom of each other’s heart. Lancelot’s sick- 
room was now pleasant enough, and he drank in daily his new 
friend’s perpetual stream of anecdote, till March and hunting 
were past, and April was half over. The old squire came up 
after dinner regularly (during March he had hunted every day, 
and slept every evening) ; and the trio chatted along merrily 
enough, by the help of whist and backgammon, upon the sur- 
face of this little island of life, — which is, like Sinbad’s, after all 
only the back of a floating whale, ready to dive at any moment. — 
And then ? 

But what V7as Argemone doing all this time ? Argemone 
was busy in her boudoir (too often a true houdoir to her) among 
books and sMuettes, and dried flowers, fancying herself, and 
not unfairly, very intellectual. She had four new manias every 
year : her last winter’s one had been that bottle-and-squirt ma- 
nia, miscalled chemistry ; her spring madness was for the Greek 
drama. She had devoured Schlegel’s lectures, and thought 
them divine ; and now she was hard at work on Sophocles, with 
a little help from translations, and thought she understood him 
every word. Then she was somewhat High-Church in her no- 
tions, and used to go up every Wednesday and Friday to the 
chapel in the hills, where Lancelot had met her, for an hour’s 
mystic devotion, set off by a little graceful asceticism. As for Lan- 
celot, she never thought of him but as an empty-headed fox- 
hunter, who had met his deserts; and the brilliant accounts 
which the all-smoothing colonel gave at dinner of Lancelot’s 
physical well-doing and agreeable conversation only made her 
set him down the sooner as a twin clever-do-notking to the de- 
spised Bracebridge, whom she hated for keeping her father in a 
roar of laughter. 


SPRING YEARNINGS. 


27 


But her sister, little Honoria, had all the while been busy 
messing and cooking with her own hands for the invalid, and 
almost fell in love with the colonel for his watchful kindness. 
And here a word about Honoria, to whom Nature, according to 
her wont with sisters, had given almost every thing which Arge- 
mone wanted, and denied almost every thing which Argemone 
had, except beauty. And even in that, the many-sided mothei 
had made her a perfect contrast to her sister, — tiny and luscious, 
dark-eyed and dark-haired ; as full of wild simple passion as an 
Italian, thinking little, except where she felt much — which was, 
indeed, everywhere ; for she lived in a perpetual April-shower 
of exaggerated sympathy for all suffering, whether in novels or 
in life ; and daily gave the lie to that shallow old calumny, 
that ‘ fictitious sorrows harden the heart to real ones.’ 

Argemone was almost angry with her sometimes, when she 
trotted whole days about the village from school to sick-room : 
perhaps conscience hinted to her that her duty, too, lay rather 
there than among her luxurious day-dreams. But, alas ! though 
she would have indignantly repelled the accusation of selfish- 
ness, yet in self and for self alone she lived ; and while she had 
force of will for any so-called ‘ self-denial,’ and would fast her- 
self cross and stupified, and quite enjoy kneeling thinly clad 
and barefoot on the freezing chapel-floor on a winter’s morning, 
yet her fastidious delicacy revolted at sitting, like Honoria, be- 
side the bed of the plowman’s consumptive daughter, in a 
reeking, stifling, lean-to garret, in which had slept the night 
before, the father, mother, and two grown-up boys, not to men- 
tion a new-married couple, the sick girl, and, alas ! her baby, 
^nd of such bedchambers there were too many in Whitford Priors. 

The first evening that Lancelot came down stairs, Honoria 
clapped her hands outright for joy as he entered, and ran up 
and down for ten minutes, ^fetching and carrying endless unne- 
cessary cushions and footstools ; while Argemone .greeted him 
with a cold distant bow, and a fine-lady drawl of carefully com- 
monplaco ^congratulations. Her heart smote her though, as 


28 


SPRING YEARNINGS. 


she saw the wan face and the wild, melancholy, moon-struck 
eyes once more glaring through and through her ; she found 
a comfort in thinking his stare impertinent, drew herself up, 
and turned away ; once, indeed, she could not help listening, as 
Lancelot thanked Mrs. Lavington for all the pious and edifying 
books with which the good lady had kept his room rather than 
his brain furnished for the last six weeks ; he was going to say 
more, but he saw the colonel’s quaint foxy eye peering at him. 
remembered St. Francis de Sales, and held his tongue. 

But, as her destiny was, Argemone found herself, in the 
course of the evening, alone with Lancelot, at the open window. 
It was a still, hot, heavy night, after long easterly drought ;< 
sheet-lightning glimmered on the far horizon over the dark 
woodlands ; the coming shower had sent forward as his herald 
a whispering draught of fragrant air. 

‘ What a delicious shiver is creeping over those limes !’ said 
Lancelot, half to himself. 

The expression struck Argemone : it was the right one, and 
it seemed to open vistas of feeling and observation in the speaker 
which she had not suspected. There was a rich melancholy in 
the voice ; — she turned to look at him. 

‘ Ay,’ he went on ; ‘ and the same heat which crisps those 
thirsty leaves must breed the thunder-shower which cools 
them ! But so it is throughout the universe : every yearning 
proves the existence of an object meant to satisfy it ; the same 
law creates both the giver and the receiver, the longing and its 
home.’ ' 

‘ If one could but know sometimes what it is for which one 
is longing !’ said Argemone, without knowing that she was 
speaking from her inmost heart : but thus does the soul invol- 
untarily lay bare its most unspoken depths in the presence of 
its yet unknown mate, and then shudders at its own abandon^ 
as it first tries on the wedding-garment of Paradise. 

Lancelot was not yet past the era at which young geniuses 
are apt to ‘ talk book’ a little. 


SPRING YEARNINGS. 


29 


‘ For what ?’ he answered, flashing up according to his fashion, 
*To be; — to be great; to have done one mighty work before 
we die, and live, unloved or loved, upon the lips of men. For 
this all long who are not mere apes and wall-flies.’ 

‘ So longed the founders of Babel,’ answered Argemon^, care- 
lessly, to this tirade. She had risen a strange fish, the cunning 
beauty, and now she was trying her fancy flies over him one 
by one. 

‘ And were they so far wrong V answered he. ‘ From that 
Babel society sprung our architecture, our astronomy, politics, 
and colonization. No doubt the old Hebrew scheiks thought 
them impious enough, for daring to build brick walls instead 
of keeping to the good old-fashioned tents, and gathering them- 
selves into a nation instead of remaining a mere family horde ; 
and gave their own account of the myth, just as the antedilu- 
vian savages gave theirs of that strange Eden scene, by the 
common interpretation of which the devil is made the first in- 
ventor of modesty. Men are all conservatives ; every thing new 
is impious, till we get accustomed to it; and if it fails, the 
mob piously disco\'er a divine vengeance in the mischance, from 
Babel to Catholic Emancipation.” 

Lancelot had stuttered horribly during the latter part of this 
most heterodox outburst, for he had begun to think about him- 
self, and try to say a fine thing, suspecting all the while that it 
might not be true. But Argemone did not remark the stam- 
mering : the new thoughts startled and pained her ; but there 
was a daring grace about them. She tried, as women will, to 
answer him with arguments, and failed, as women will fail. 
She w^as accustomed to lay down the law, a la Madame de 
Sta6l, to savants and non-savants^ and be heard with rever 
ence, as a woman should be. But poor truth-seeking Lancelot 
did not see what sex had to do with logic ; he flew at her as 
if she had been a very barrister, and hunted her mercilessly un 
and down through all sorts of charming sophisms, as she begged 
the question, and shifted her ground, as thoroughly right in 


30 


SPRING YEARNINGS. 


her conclusion as she was wrong in her reasoning, till she grew 
quite confused and pettish. — And then Lancelot suddenly 
shrank into his shell, claws and all, like an affrighted soldier- 
crab, hung down his head, and stammered out some in coheren- 
cies, — ‘ N-n-not accustomed to talk to women — ladies, I mean. 
F-forgot myself. — Pray forgive me !’ And he looked up, and 
her eyes, half-amused, met his, and she saw that they were 
filled with tears. 

‘ What have I to forgive V she said, more gently, wondering 
on what sort of a strange sportsman she had fallen. ‘ You 
treat me like an equal ; you will deign to argue with me. But 
men in general — oh, they hide their contempt for us, if not 
their own ignorance, under that mask of chivalrous deference ’ 
And then in the nasal fine-ladies’ key, which was her shell, as 
bitter brusquerie was his, she added, with an Amazon queen’s 
toss of the head, — ‘ You must come and see us often. We 
shall suit each other, I see, better than most whom we see 
here.’ 

A sneer and a blush passed together over Lancelot’s ugli- 
ness. 

‘ What, better than the glib Colonel Bracebridge yonder ?’ 

‘ Oh, he is witty enough, but he lives on the surface of every 
thing ! He is altogether shallow and blase. His good-nature 
is the fruit of want of feeling ; between his gracefulness and 
his sneering persiflage he is a perfect Mephistopheles- Apollo.’ 

What a snare a decently-good nickname is ! Out it must 
come, though it carry a lie on its back. But the truth was, 
Argemone thought herself infinitely superior to the colonel, for 
which simple reason she could not in the least understand him. 

[By-the-by, how subtilly Mr. Tennyson has embodied all this 
m The Princess, How he shows us the woman, when she 
lakes her stand on the false masculine ground of intellect, work- 
ing out her own moral punishment, by destroying in herself 
the tender heart of flesh, which is either woman’s highest 


SPRING YEARNINGS. 


31 


blessing or her bitterest curse ; how she loses all feminine sen- 
sibility to the under-current of feeling in us poor world-worn, 
case-hardened men, and falls from pride to sternness, from stern- 
ness to sheer inhumanity. I should have honored myself by 
pleading guilty to stealing much of Argemone’s character from 
The Princess^ had not the idea been conceived, and fairly 
worked out, long before the appearance of that noble poem.] 

They said no more to each other that evening. Argemone 
was called to the piano ; and Lancelot took up the Sporting 
Magazine^ and read himself to sleep, till the party separated 
for the night. 

Argemone went up thoughtfully to her own room. The 
shower had fallen, and the moon was shining bright, while every 
budding leaf and knot of mold steamed up cool perfume, bor- 
rowed from the treasures of the thunder-cloud. All around was 
working the infinite mystery of birth and growth, of giving and 
taking, of beauty and use. All things were harmonious — ail 
things reciprocal without. Argemone felt herself needless, 
lonely, and out of tune with hei'self and nature. 

She sat in the window, and listlessly read over to herself a 
fragment of her own poetry : — 

SAPPHO. 

She lay among the myrtles on the cliff; 

Above her glared the noon ; beneath, the sea. 

Upon the white horizon Athos’ peak 
Weltered in burning haze; all airs were dead ; 

The cicale slept among the tamarisk’s hair ; 

The birds sat dumb and drooping. Far below 
The lazy sea-weed glistened in the sun ; 

The lazy sea-fowl dried their steaming wings ; 

The lazy swell crept whispering up the ledge, 

And sank again. Great Pan was laid to rest; 

And Mother Earth watched by him as he slept, 

And hushed her myriad children for awhile. 


S2 


SPRING YEARNINGS. 


She lay among the myrtles on the cliff ; 

And sighed, for sleep, for sleep that would not hear, 

But left her tossing still ; for night and day 
A mighty hunger yearned within her heart, 

Till all her veins ran fever, and her cheek. 

Her long thin hands, and ivory-channel’d feet. 

Were wasted with the wasting of her souh 
Then peevishly she flung her on her face. 

And hid her eyeballs from the blinding glare, 

And fingered at the grass, and tried to cool 
Her crisp hot lips against the crisp hot sward : 

And then she raised her head, and upward cast 
Wild looks from homeless eyes, whose liquid light 
Gleamed out between deep folds of blue-black hair, 

As gleam twin lakes between the purple peaks 
Of deep Parnassus, at the mournful moon. 

Beside her lay her lyre. She snatched the shell. 

And waked wild music from its silver strings ; 

Then tossed it sadly by. — ‘ Ah, hush !’ she cries, 

‘ Dead offspring of the tortoise and the mine ! 

Why mock my discords with thine harmonies ^ 

Although a thrice- Olympian lot be thine. 

Only to echo back in every tone, 

The moods of nobler natures than thine own.’ 

‘Nol’ she said. ‘That soft and rounded rhyme suits ill 
with Sappho’s fitful and wayward agonies. She should burst 
out at once into wild passionate life-weariness, and disgust at 
that universe, with whose beauty she has filled her eyes in vain, 
to find it always a dead picture, unsatisfying, unloving — as I 
have found it.’ 

Sweet self-deceiver 1 had you no other reason for choosing 
as your heroine Sappho, the victim of the idolatry of intellect 
— trying in vain to fill her heart with the friendship of her 
own sex, and then sinking into mere passion for a handsome 
boy, and so down into self-contempt and suicide ? 

She was conscious, I do believe, of no other reason than that 
she gave ; but consciousness is a dim candle — over a deep mine. 

‘ After all,’ she said pettishly, ‘ people will call it a mere 


SPRING YEARNINGS. 


33 


imitation of Shelley’s And what harm if it is? Is 

there to be no female Alastor ? Has not the woman as good 
a right as the man to long after ideal beauty — to pine and 
die if she can not find it ; and regenerate herself in its light V 

‘ Yo-hoo-oo-oo ! Youp-yoiip 1 Oh-hooo !’ arose doleful 
through the echoing shrubbery. 

Argemone started and looked out. It was not a banshee, 
but a forgotten foxhound puppy, sitting mournfully on the 
gravel- walk beneath, staring at the clear ghastly moon. 

She laughed, and blushed — there was a rebuke in it. She 
turned to go to rest ; and as she knelt and prayed at her vel- 
vet faldstool, among all the knicknacks which nowadays make 
a luxury of devotion, was it strange if, after she had prayed for 
the fate of nations and churches, and for those who, as she 
thought, were fighting at Oxford the cause of universal truth 
and reverend antiquity, she remembered in her petitions the 
poor godless youth, with his troubled and troubling eloquence ? 
But it was strange that she blushed when she mentioned his 
name — why should she not pray for him as she prayed for 
others ? 

Perhaps she felt that she did not pray for him as she prayed 
for others. 

She left the ^olian harp in the window, as a luxury if she 
should wake, and coiled herself up among lace pillows and 
eider blemos ; and the hound coiled himself up on the gravel- 
walk, after a solemn vesper-ceremony of three turns round in 
his own length, looking vainly for ‘ a soft stone.’ The finest 
of us are animals after all, and live by eating and sleeping : 
and, taken as animals, not so badly off either — unless we hap- 
pen to be Dorsetshire laborers — or Spitalfields weavers — or 
colliery children — or marching soldiers — or, I am afraid, one 
half of English souls this day. 

And Argemone dreamed ; — that she was a fox, flying for 
her life through a church-yard — and Lancelot was a hound, 
yelling and leaping;, in a red coat and white buckskins, close 


34 


SPRING YEARMNGS. 


upon her — and she felt his hot breath, and saw his white teeth 
glare .... And then her father was there ; and he was an 
Italian boy, and played the organ — and Lancelot was a dancing 
dog, and stood up and danced to the tune of ‘ C’est Vamour^ 
Vamour^ Vamour^ pitifully enough, in his red coat — and she 
stood up and danced too ; but she found her fox-fur dress in- 
siafficient, and begged hard for a paper frill — which was denied 
her : whereat she cried bitterly, and woke ; and saw the Night 
peeping in with her bright diamond eyes, and blushed, and hid 
her beautiful face in the pillows, and fell asleep again. 

What the little imp, who managed this puppet-show on 
Argemone’s brain-stage, may have intended to symbolize 
thereby, and whence he stole his actors and stage-properties, 
and whether he got up the interlude for his own private fun, 
or for that of a choir of brother Eulenspiegels, or, finally, for 
the edification of Argemone as to her own history, past, present, 
or future, are questions which we must leave unanswered, till 
physicians have become a little more of metaphysicians, and 
have given up their present plan of ignoring for nine hundred 
and ninety-nine pages that most awful and significant custom 
of dreaming, and then in the thousandth page talking the 
boldest materialist twaddle about it. 

In the mean time, Lancelot, contrary to the colonel’s express 
commands, was sitting up to indite the following letter to his 
cousin the Tractarian curate : — 

‘ You complain that I waste my time in field-sports : how 
do you know that I waste my time ? I find within myself 
certain appetites ; and I suppose that the God whom you say 
made me, made those appetites as a part of me. Why are 
they to be crushed any more than any other part of me ? I 
am the whole of what I find in myself — am I to pick and 
choose myself out of myself ? And besides, I feel that the ex- 
ercise of freedom, activity, foresight, daring, independent self- 
determination, even in a few minutes’ burst across country, 
strengthens me in mind as well as in body. It might not do 


SPRING YEARNINGS. 


35 


SO to you ; but you are of a different constitution, and, from 
all I see, the power of a man’s muscles, the excitability of his 
nerves, the shape and balance of his brain, make him what he 
is. Else what is the meaning of physiognomy ? Every man’s 
destiny, as the Turks say, stands written on his forehead. One 
does not need two glances at your face to know that you 
would not enjoy fox-hunting, that you would enjoy book-learn- 
ing, and ‘ refined repose,’ as they are pleased to call it. Every 
man carries his character in his brain. You all know that, and 
act upon it when you have to deal with a man for sixpence ; 
but your religious dogmas, which make out that every man 
comes into the world equally brutish and fiendish, make you 
afraid to confess it. I don’t quarrel with a ‘ douce’ man like 
you, with a large organ of veneration, for following your bent. 
But if I am fiery, with a huge cerebellum, why am I not to 
follow mine ? — For that is what you do, after all — what you 
like best. It is all very easy for a man to talk of conquering 
his appetites, when he has none to conquer. Try and conquer 
your organ of veneration, or of benevolence, or of calculation — 
then I will call you an ascetic. Why not ? — The same Power 
which made the front of one’s head made the back, I suppose ? 

‘ And, I tell you, hunting does me good. It awakens me out 
of my dreary mill-round of metaphysics. It sweeps away that 
infernal web of self-consciousness, and absorbs me in outward 
objects ; and my red-hot Perillus’ bull cools in proportion as my 
horse warms. I tell you, I never saw a man who could cut out 
his way across country who could not cut his way through bet- 
ter things when his turn came. The cleverest and noblest fel- 
lows are sure to be the best riders in the long run. And as for 
bad company and ‘ the world,’ when you take to going in the 
first-class carriages for fear of meeting a swearing sailor in a sec- 
ond-class — when those who have ‘ renounced the world’ give 
up buying and selling in the funds — when my uncle, the pious 
banker, who will only ‘ associate ’ with the truly religious, gives 
up dealing with any scoundrel or heathen who can ‘ do busi- 


36 


SPRING YEARNINGS. 


ness’ with him, — then you may quote pious people’s opinions 
to me. In God’s nanie, if the Stock Exchange, and railway 
stagging, and the advertisements in the Protestant Hue-and- 
Cry, and the frantic Mammon-hunting which has been for the 
last fifty years the peculiar pursuit of the majority of Quakers, 
Dissenters, and Religious Churchmen, are not The Worlds what 
s? I don’t complain of them, though ; Puritanism has inter- 
dicted to them all art, all excitement, all amusement — except 
money-making. It is their dernier ressort^ poor souls ! 

‘ But you must explain to us naughty fox-hunters how all this 
agrees with the good book. We see plainly enough, in the 
mean time, how it agrees with ‘ poor human nature.’ We see 
that the ‘ religious world,’ like the ‘ great world,’ and the ‘ sport- 
ing world,’ and the ‘ literary world,’ 

Compounds for sins she is inclined to, 

By damning those she has no mind to ; 

and that because England is a money-making country, and 
money-making is an effeminate pursuit, therefore all sedentary 
and spoony sins, like covetousness, slander, bigotry, and self- 
conceit, are to be cockered and plastered over, while the more 
masculine vices, and no-vices also, are mercilessly hunted down 
by your cold-blooded, soft-handed religionists. 

‘This is a more quiet letter than usual from me, my dear 
coz., for many of your reproofs cut me home : they angered me 
at the time ; but I deserve them. I am miserable, self-disgust- 
ed, self-helpless, craving for freedom, and yet crying aloud for 
some one to guide me, and teach me; and whj is therein these 
days who could teach a fast man^ even if he would try? Be 
sure, that as long as you and yours make piety a synonym for 
unmanliness, you will never convert either me or any other good 
portsman. 

‘ By-the-by, my dear fellow, was I asleep or awake when 1 
seemed to read in the postscript of your last letter, something 

about ‘ being driven to Rome after all ?’ Why thither, 

of all places in heaven or earth ? You know, I have no party 


SPRING YEARNINGS. 


37 


interest in the question. All creeds are very much alike to me 
just now. But allow me to ask, in a spirit of the most tolerant 
curiosity, what possible celestial bait, either of the useful or the 
agreeable kind, can the present excellent Pope, or his adherents, 
hold out to you in compensation for the solid earthly pudding 
which you would have to desert ? . . . . I dare say, though, 
iLat I shall not comprehend your answer when it comes. I am, 
you know, utterly deficient in that sixth sense of the angelic or 
supra-lunar beautiful, which fills your soul with ecstasy. You, 
I know, expect and long to become an angel after death : I am 
under the strange hallucination that my body is part of me, 
and in spite of old Plotinus, look with horror at a disembodied 
immortality — or even a few thousand years of disembodiment 
till the giving of that new body, the great perfection of which, 
in your eyes, and those of every one else, seems to be, that it 
will be less, and not more of a body, than our present one. . . . 
Is this hope, to me at once inconceivable and contradictory, pal- 
pable and valuable enough to you to send you to that Italian 
Avernus, to get it made a little more certain ? If so, I despaii 
of your making your meaning intelligible to a poor fellow wal- 
lowing, like me, in the Hylic Borboros — or whatever else you 
may choose to call the unfortunate fact of being flesh and 
blood . . Still, write.’ 


CHAPTER III. 


NEW ACTOKS, AND A NEW STAGE. 

When Argemone rose in the morning, her first thought was 
of Lancelot. His face haunted her. The wild brilliance of his 
intellect, struggling through foul smoke-clouds, had hauntod her 
still more. She had heard of his profligacy, his bursts of fierce 
Berserk-madness ; and yet now these very faults, instead of re- 
pelling, seemed to attract her, and intensify her longing to save 
him. She would convert him ; purify him ; harmonize his dis- 
cords. And that very wish gave her a peace she had never 
felt before. She had formed her idea ; she had now a purpose 
for which to live, and she determined to concentrate herself for 
the work, and longed for the moment when she should meet 
Lancelot, and begin — how, she did not very clearly see. 

It is an old jest — the fair devotee trying to convert the young 
rake. Men of the world laugh heartily at it ; and so does the 
devil, no doubt. If any readers wish to be fellow-jesters with 
that personage, they may ; but, as sure as old Saxon woman- 
worship remains forever a blessed and healing law of life, the 
devotee may yet convert the rake — and, perhaps, herself into 
the bargain. 

Argemone looked almost angrily round at her beloved books 
r.nd drawings ; for they spoke a message to her which they had 
never spoken before, of self-centred ambition. ‘ Yes.’ she said 
aloud to herself, ‘ I have been selfish, utterly ! Art, poetry 
science — ^I believe, after all, that I have only loved them for my 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


39 


own sake, not for theirs, because they would make me some' 
thing, feed my conceit of my own talents. How infinitely more 
glorious to find my work-field and my prize, not in dead forms 
and colors, or ink and paper theories, but in a living, immortal, 
human spirit I I will study no more, except the human heart, 
and only that to purify and ennoble it.’ 

True, Argemone ; and yet, like all resolutions, somewhat less 
than the truth. That morning, indeed, her purpose was simple 
as God’s own light. She never dreamed of exciting Lancelot’s 
admiration, even his friendship, for herself. She would have 
started as from a snake, from the issue which the reader very 
clearly foresees, that Lancelot would fall in love, not with 
Young-Englandism, but with Argemone Lavington. But yet 
self is not eradicated even from a woman’s heart in one morn- 
ing before breakfast. Besides, it is not ‘ benevolence,’ but love 
— the real Cupid of flesh and blood, who can first 

Touch the chord of self, which, trembling. 

Passes in music out of sight. 

But a time for all things ; and it is now time for Argemone 
to go down to breakfast, having prepared some dozen imagi- 
nary dialogues between herself and Lancelot, in which, of course, 
her eloquence always had the victory. She had yet to learn, 
that it is better sometimes not to settle in one’s heart what we 
shall speak, for the Everlasting Will has good works ready pre- 
pared for us to walk in, by what we call fortunate accident; 
and it shall be given us in that day and that hour what we 
shall speak. 

Lancelot, in the mean time, shrank from meeting Argemone ; 
and was quite glad of the weakness which kept him up stairs. 
Whether he was afraid of her — whether he was ashamed of 
himself or of his crutches, I can not tell, but I dare say, reader, 
you are getting tired of all this soul-dissecting. So we will 
have a bit of action again, for tl e sake of variety if for nothing 
better. 


40 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


Of all the species of lovely scenery which England holds, 
none, perhaps, is more exquisite than the banks of the chalk- 
rivers — the perfect limpidity of the water, the gay and luxu- 
riant vegetation of the banks and ditches, the masses of noble 
wood embosoming the villages, the unique beauty of the water- 
meadows, living sheets of emerald and silver, tinkling and spark- 
iing, cool under the fiercest sun, brilliant under the blackest 
clouds. — ^There, if anywhere, one would have expected to find 
Arcadia among fertility, loveliness, industry^ and wealth. But, 
alas for the sad reality ! the cool breath of those glittering 
water-meadows too often floats laden with poisonous miasma. 
Those picturesque villages are generally the perennial hotbeds 
of fever and ague, of squalid penury, sottish profligacy, dull dis- 
content too stale for words. There is luxury in the park, 
wealth in the huge farm-steadings, knowledge in the parson- 
age : but the poor ? those by whose dull labor all that luxury 
and wealth, ay, even that knowledge, is made possible, what 
are they ? We shall see, please God, ere the story’s end. 

But of all this Lancelot as yet thought nothing. He, too, 
had to be emancipated, as much as Argemone, from selfish 
dreams : to learn to work trustfully in the living Present, not 
to gloat sentimentally over the unreturning Past. But his time 
was not yet come ; and little he thought of all the work which 
lay ready for him within a mile of the Priory, as he watched 
the ladies go out for the afternoon, and slipped down to the 
Nun-pool on his crutches to smoke, and fish, and build castles 
in -the air. 

The Priory, with its rambling courts and gardens, stood on 
an island in the river. The upper stream flowed in a straight 
* artificial channel through the garden, still and broad, toward 
the Priory mill ; while just above the Priory wall half the river 
fell over a high weir, with all its appendages of bucks and 
hatchways, and eel-baskets, into the Nun’s-pool, and then swept 
round under the ivied walls, with their fantastic turrets and 
gables, and little loopholed 'w’ndows peering out over the stream 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


41 


as it hurried down over the shallows to join the race below the 
mill. A postern-door in the walls opened on an ornamental 
wooden bridge across the weir-head — a favorite haunt of all 
fishers and sketchers who were admitted to the dragon-guarded 
Elysium of Whitford Priors. Thither Lancelot went, congratu- 
lating himself, strange to say, in having escaped the only human 
being whom he loved on earthy 

He found on the weir-bridge two of the keepers. The 
younger one, Tregarva, was a stately, thoughtful-looking Cor- 
nishman, some six feet three in height, with thews and sinews 
in proportion. He was sitting on the bridge looking over a 
basket of eel-lines, and listening silently to the chat of his com- 
panion. 

Old Harry Verney, the other keeper, was a character in his 
way, and a very bad character, too, though he was a patriarch 
among all the gamekeepers of the vale. He was a short, wiry, 
bandy-legged, ferret-visaged old man, with grizzled hair, and a 
wizened face tanned brown and purple by constant exposure. 
Between rheumatism and constant handling the rod and gun, 
his fingers were crooked like a hawk’s claws. He kept his left 
eye always shut, apparently to save trouble in shooting ; and 
squinted, and sniffed, and peered, with a stooping back and 
protruded chin, as if he were perpetually on the watch for fish, 
flesh, and fowl, vermin and Christian. The friendship between 
himself and the Scotch terrier at his heels would have been 
easily explained by Lessing, for in the transmigration of souls 
the spirit of Harry Verney had evidently once animated a dog 
of that breed. He was dressed in a huge thick fustian jacket, 
scratched, stained, and patched, with bulging, greasy pockets ; 
a cast of flies round a battered hat, riddled with shot-holes, a 
dog-whistle at his button-hole, and an old gun cut short over 
his arm, bespoke his business. 

‘ I seed that ’ere Crawy against Ashy Down Plantations 
last night. I’ll be sworn,’ said he, in a squeaking, sneaking 
tone. 


42 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


‘Well, what harm was the man doing ?’ 

* Oh, ay, that’s the way you young ’uns talk. If he warn'l 
doing mischief, he’d a been glad to have been doing it. I’ll 
warrant If I’d been as youi g as you, I’d have picked a quar- 
rel with him soon enough, and found a cause for -tackling him. 
It’s worth a brace of sovereigns with the squire to haul him up. 
Eh ? eh ? An’t old Harry righ], now V 

‘ Humph !’ growled the younger man. 

‘ There, then, you get me a snare and a hare by to-morrow 
night,’ went on old Harry, ‘ and see if I don’t nab him. It 
won’t lay long under the plantation afore he picks it up. You 
mind to snare me a hare to-night, now !’ 

‘ I’ll do no such thing, nor help to bring false accusations 
against any man 1’ 

‘ False accusations !’ answered Harry, in his cringing way . 
‘ Look at that now, for a keeper to say ! Why, if he don’ik 
happen to have a snare just there, he has somewhere else, you 
know. Eh ? An’t old Harry right now, eh ? 

‘ Maybe.’ 

‘ There, don’t say I don’t know nothing then. Eh ? What 
matter who put the snare down, or the hare in, perwided he 
takes it up, man ? If ’twas his’n, he’d be all the better pleased. 
The most notoriousest poacher as walks unhung !’ And old 
Harry lifted up his crooked hands in pious indignation. 

‘ I’ll have no more gamekeeping, Harry. What with hunt- 
ing down Christians as if they were vermin, all night, and 
being cursed by the squire all day, I’d sooner be a sheriff’s 
runner, or a negro slave.’ 

‘ Ay, ay ! that’s the way the young dogs always bark afore 
they’re broke in, and gets to like it, as the eels does skinning. 
Haven’t I bounced pretty near out of my skin many a time 
afore now, on this here very bridge, with ‘ Harry, jump in, you 
stupid hound !’ and ‘ Harry, get out, you one-eyed tailor !’ 
And then, if one of the gentlemen lost a fish with their clum- 
siness — Oh, Father ! to hear ’em let out at me and my landing 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


43 


net, and curse fit to fright the devil ! Dash their sarcy tongues \ 
Eh ? Don’t old Harry know their ways ? Don’t he know ’em, now V 

‘ Ay,’ said the young man bitterly. ‘We break the dogs, 
and we load the guns, and we find the game, and mark the 
game, — and then they call themselves sportsmen ; we choose 
the flies, and we bait the spinning-hooks, and we show them 
where the fish lie, and then when they’ve hooked them, they 
can’t get them out without us and the spoon-net ; and then 
they go home to the ladies and boast of the lot of fish they 
killed — and who thinks of the keeper !’ 

‘ Oh ? ah ? Then don’t say old Harry knows nothing then. 
How nicely, now, you and I might get a living off this ere 
manor, if the landlords was served like the French ones was. 
Eh, Paul V chuckled old Harry. ‘ Wouldn’t we pay our taxes 
with pheasants and grayling, that’s all, eh ? An’t old Harry 
right now, eh V 

The old fox was fishing for an assent, not for its own sake, 
for he was a fierce Tory, and would have stood up to be shot 
any day, not only for his master’s sake, but for the sake of a 
single pheasant of his master’s ; but he hated Tregarva for 
many reasons, and was daily on the watch to entrap him on 
some of his peculiar points, whereof he had, as we shall find, a 
good many. 

What would have been Tregarva’s answer, l ean not tell ; 
but Lancelot, who had unintentionally overheard the greater 
part of the conversation, disliked being any longer a listener, 
and came close to them. 

‘ Here’s your gudgeons and minnows, sir, as you bespoke,’ 
quoth Harry ‘and here’s that paternoster as you gave me to 
lig up. Beautiful minnows, sir ; white as a silver spoon. — 
They’re the ones now, an’t they, sir, eh V 

‘ They’ll do !’ 

‘ Well, then, don’t say old Harry don’t know nothing, that’s 
all, eh V and the old fellow toddled off, peering and twisting 
his head about like a starling. 


44 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE, 


‘ An odd fellow that, Tregarva,’ said Lancelot. 

‘Very, sir, considering who made him,’ answered the Cor- 
nishman, touching his hat, and then thrusting his nose deeper 
than ever into the eel-basket. 

‘ Beautiful stream this,’ said Lancelot, who had a continual 
longing — right or wrong — to chat with his inferiors; and waa 
proportionately sulky and reserved to his superiors. 

‘ Beautiful enough, sir,’ said the keeper, with an emphasis on 
the first word. 

‘ Why, has it any other fault ? 

‘ Not so wholesome as pretty, sir.’ 

‘ What harm does it do ?’ 

‘ Fever, and ague, and rheumatism, sir.’ 

‘ Where ?’ asked Lancelot, a little amused by the man’s la- 
conic answers. 

‘ Wherever the white fog spreads, sir.’ 

‘ Where’s that V 

‘ Everywhere, sir.’ 

‘ And when ?’ • 

‘ Always, sir.’ 

Lancelot burst out laughing. The man looked up at him 
slowly and seriously. 

‘ You wouldn’t laugh, sir, if you’d seen much of the inside 
of these cottages round.’ 

‘ Really,’ said Lancelot, ‘ I was only laughing at our making 
such very short work of such a long and serious story. Bo 
you mean that the unhealthiness of this country is wholly 
caused by the river V 

‘ No, sir. The river-damps are God’s sending ; and so they 
are not too bad to bear. But there’s more of man’s sending, 
tha: is too bad to bear.’ 

‘ What do you mean V ■ 

'Are men likely to be healthy when they are worse housed 
than a pig V 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


45 


‘And worse fed than a hound V 

‘Good heavens ! No !’ 

‘ Or packed together to sleep, like pilchards in a barrel V 

‘But, my good fellow, dc you mean that the laborers here 
are in that state 

‘ It isn^t far to walk, sir. Perhaps, some day, when the may- 
fly is gone off, and the fish won’t rise awhile, you could walk 
down and see. I beg your pardon, sir, though, for thinking of 
such a thing. They are not places fit for gentlemen, that’s 
certain.’ There was a staid irony in his tone, which Lancelot 
felt. 

‘ But the clergyman goes ?’ 

‘ Yes, sir.’ 

‘And Miss Honoria goes?’ 

‘ Yes, God Almighty bless her !’ 

‘ And do not they see that all goes right ?’ 

The giant twisted his huge limbs, as if trying.to avoid an 
answer, and yet not daring to do so. 

‘ Do clergymen go about among the poor much, sir, at col- 
lege, before they are ordained ?’ 

Lancelot smiled, and shook his head. 

‘ I thought so, sir. Our good vicar is like the rest here- 
abouts. God knows, he stints neither time nor money — the 
souls of the poor are well looked after, and their bodies, too — 
as far as his purse will go ; but that’s not far.’ 

‘ Is he ill-oflf, then ?’ 

‘ The living’s worth some forty pounds a-year. The great 
tithes, they say, are worth better than twelve hundred ; but 
Squire Lavington has them.’ 

‘ Oh, I see !’ said Lancelot. 

‘ I’m glad you do, sir, for I don’t,’ meekly answered Tregarva. 

But the vicar, sir, he is a kind man, and a good ; but the poor 
don’t understand him, nor he them, ^e is too learned, sir, 
and, saving your presence, too fond of his prayer-book.’ 

‘One can’t be too fond of a good thing !' 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


IG 


‘ Not unless you make an idol of it, sir, and fancy that men’s 
souls were made for the prayer-book, and not the prayer-book 
for them.’ 

‘But can not he expose and redress these evils, if they exist ?’ 

Tregarva twisted about again. 

‘ I do not say that I think it, sir ; but this I know, that every 
poor man in the vale thinks it — that the parsons are afraid of 
the landlords. They must see these things, for they are not 
blind ; and they try to plaster them up out of their own 
pockets.’ 

‘ But why, in God’s name, don’t they strike at the root of 
the matter, and go straight to the landlords and tell them the 
truth V asked Lancelot. 

‘ So people say, sir. I see no reason for it, except the one 
which I gave you. Besides, sir, you must remember that a 
man can’t quarrel with his own kin ; and so many of them are 
their squire’s brothers, or sons, or nephews.’ 

‘ Or good friends with him, at least.’ 

‘ Ay, sir, and, to do them justice, they had need, for the 
poor’s sake, to keep good friends with the squire. How else 
are they to get a farthing for schools, or coal-subscriptions, or 
lying-in societies, or lending-libraries, or penny-clubs ? If they 
spoke their minds to the great ones, sir, how could they keep 
the parish together ?’ 

‘ You seem to see both sides of a question, certainly. But 
what a miserable state of things, that the laboring man should 
require all these societies, and charities, and helps from the 
rich ! — that an industrious freeman can not live without alms 1’ 

‘ So I have thought this long time,’ quietly answered Tre- 
garva. 

‘ But Miss Honoria, — she is not afraid to tell her father the 
truth V 

‘ Suppose, sir, when Adam and Eve were in the garden, that 
all the devils had come up and played their fiends’ tricks before 
them, — do you think they’d have seen any shame in it V 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 47 

‘ I really can not tell,’ said Lancelot, smiling. 

‘Then I can, sir. They’d have seen no more harm in it 
than there was harm already in themselves ; and that was 
none. A man’s eyes can only see what they’ve learnt to see.’ 

Lancelot started : it was a favorite dictum of his in CarlyL’a 
works. 

‘ Where did you get that thought, my friend V 

‘ By seeing, sir.’ 

‘ But what has that to do with Miss Honoria V 

‘ She is an angel of holiness herself, sir ; and, therefore, she 
goes on without blushing or suspecting, where our blood would 
boil again. She sees people in want, and thinks it must be so, 
and pities them and relieves them. But she don’t know want 
herself; and, therefore, she don’t know that it makes men 
beasts and devils. She’s as pure as God’s light herself; and, 
therefore, she fancies every one is as spotless as she is. And 
there’s another mistake in your charitable great people, sir. 
When they see poor folk sick or hungry before their eyes, they 
pull out their purses fast enough, God bless them ; for they 
wouldn’t like to be so themselves. But the oppression that goes 
on all the year round, and the want that goes on all the year 
round, and the filth, and the lying, and the swearing, and the 
profligacy, that go on all the year round, and the sickening 
weight of debt, and the miserable grinding anxiety from rent- 
day to rent-day, and Saturday night to Saturday night, that 
crushes a man’s soul down, and drives every thought out of his 
Lead but how he is to fill his stomach and warm his back, and 
keep a house over his head, till he daren’t for his life take his 
thoughts one moment off the meat that perisheth — oh, sir, they 
never felt this ; and, therefore, they never dream that there are 
thousands who pass them in their daily walks who feel this, 
and feel nothing else !’ 

This outburst was uttered with an earnestness and majesty 
which astonished Lancelot. He forgot the subject in the 
speaker. 


48 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


‘You are a very extraordinary gamekeeper!’ said he. 

‘ When the Lord shows a man a thing, he can’t well help 
seeing it,’ answered Tregarva, in his usual staid tone. 

There was a pause. The keeper looked at him with a glance, 
before which Lancelot’s eyes fell. 

‘ Hell is paved wnth hearsays, sir, and as all this talk of mine 
is hearsay, if you are in earnest, sir, go and see for yourself. 1 
know you have a kind heart, and they tell me you are a great 
scholar, which would to God I was ! so you ought not to con- 
descend to take my word for any thing which you can look into 
yourself;’ with which sound piece of common-sense Tregarva 
returned busily to his eel-lines. 

‘ Hand me the rod and can, and help me out along the buck- 
stage,’ said Lancelot; ‘I must have some more talk with you, 
my fine fellow.’ 

‘Amen,’ answered Tregarva, as he assisted our lame hero 
along a huge beam which stretched out into th^pool: and 
having settled him there, returned mechanically to his work, 
humming a Wesleyan hymn-tune. 

Lancelot sat and tried to catch perch, but Tregarva’s words 
haunted him. He lighted his cigar, and tried to think earnestly 
over the matter, but he had got into the wrong place for think- 
ing. All his thoughts, all his sympathies, were drowned in the 
rush and the whirl of the water. He forgot every thing else in 
the mere animal enjoyment of sight and sound. Like many 
young men at his crisis of life, he had given himself up to the 
mere contemplation of Nature till he had become her slave ; 
and now a luscious scene, a singing-bird, were enough to allure 
his mind away from the most earnest and awful thoughts. He 
tried to think, but the river would not let him. It thundered 
and spouted out behind him from the hatches, and leapt madly 
past him, and caught his eyes in spite of him, and swept them 
away down its dancing waves, and then let them go again only 
to sweep them down again and again, till his brain felt a deli- 
cious dizziness from the everlasting rush and the everlasting 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


49 


roar. And then below, how it spread, and writhed, and whirl- 
ed, into transparent fans, hissing* and twining snakes, polished 
glass-wreaths, huge crystal bells, which boiled up from the bot- 
tom, and dived again beneath long threads of creamy foam, and 
swung round posts and roots, and rushed blackening under dark 
weed-fringed boughs, and gnawed at the marly banks, and 
shook the ever-restless bulrushes, till it was swept away and 
down over the white pebbles and olive weeds, in one broad rip- 
pling sheet of molten silver, toward the distant sea. Down- 
ward it fleeted ever, and bore his thoughts floating on its oily 
stream; and the great trout, with their yellow sides and pea- 
cock backs, lunged among the eddies, and the silver grayling 
dimpled and wandered upon the shallows, and the may -flies 
flickered and rustled round him like water fairies, with their 
green gauzy wings; the coot clanked musically among the 
reeds ; the frogs hummed their ceaseless vesper-monotone ; the 
king-fisher darted from his hole in the bank like a blue spark 
of electric light; the swallows’ bills snapped as they twined 
and hawked above the pool ; the swifts’ wings whirred like 
musket-balls, as they rushed screaming past his head ; and ever 
the river fleeted by, bearing his eyes away down the current, 
till its wild eddies began to glow with crimson beneath the set- 
ting sun. The complex harmony of sights and sounds slid 
softly over his soul, and he sank away into a still day-dream, 
too passive for imagination, too deep for meditation, and 

Beauty born of murmuring sound, 

Did pass into his face. 

Blame him not. There are more things in a man’s heart than 
ever get in through his thoughts. 

On a sudden, a soft voice behind him startled him. 

‘ Can a poor Cockney artist venture himself along this timber 
without falling in V 

Lancelot turned. 

‘ Come out to me, and if you stumble, the naiads will rise 
C ' 


50 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


out of their depths, and ‘ hold up their pearled wrists’ to save 
their favorite.’ 

The artist walked timidly out along the beams, and sat down 
beside Lancelot, who shook him warmly by the hand. 

‘ Welcome, Claude Mellot, and all lovely enthusiasms and 
symbolisms ! Expound to me, now, the meaning of that water- 
lily leaf and its grand simple curve, as it lies sleeping there in 
the back eddy.’ 

‘ Oh, I am too amused to philosophize. The fair Argemone 
has been just treating me to her three hundred and sixty-fifth 
philippic against my unoffending beard.’ 

‘ Why, what fault can she find with such a graceful and nat- 
ural ornament ?’ 

‘Just this, my dear fellow, that it is natural. As it is, she 
considers me only ‘intellectual-looking.’ If the beard were 
away, my face, she says, would be ‘ so refined !’ And, I sup- 
pose if I was just a little more effeminate and pale, with a nice 
retreating under-jaw and a drooping lip, and a meek peaking 
simper, like your starved Romish saints, I should be ‘ so spirit- 
ual !’ And if again, to complete the climax, I did but shave my 
head like a Chinese, I should be a model for St. Francis himself !’ 

‘But really, after all, why make yourself so singular by this 
said beard V 

‘ I wear it for a testimony and a sign that a man has no right 
to be ashamed of the mark of manhood. Oh, that one or two 
of your Protestant clergymen, who ought to be perfect ideal 
men, would have the courage to get up into the pulpit in a long 
beard, and testify that the very essential idea of Protestantism 
is the dignity and divinity of man as God made him ! Our 
forefathers were not ashamed of their beards ; but now even 
the soldier is only allowed to keep his mustache, while our 
quill-driving masses shave themselves as close as they can ; and 
in proportion to a man’s piety he wears less hair, from the 
young curate who shaves off his whiskers, to the Popish priest 
who shaves his crown.’ 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


51 


‘ What do you say, then, to cutting off nuns’ hair V 

* I say, that extremes meet, and prudish Manichaeisra always 
end in sheer indecency. Those Papists have forgotten what 
woman was made for, and therefore, they have forgotten that a 
woman’s hair is her glory, for it was given to her for a covering ; 
as says your friend Paul the Hebrew, who, by-the-by, had as 
fine theories of art as he had of society, if he had only lived fif- 
teen hundred years later, and had a chance of working them 
out.’ 

‘ How remarkably orthodox you are !’ said Lancelot, smiling. 

‘ How do you know that I am not ? You never heard me 
deny the old creed. But what if an artist ought to be of all 
creeds at once ? My business is to represent the beautiful, and 
therefore to accept it wherever I find it. Yours is to be a philos- 
opher, and find the true.’ 

‘ But the beautiful must be truly beautiful to be worth any 
thing ; and so you, too, must search for the true.’ 

‘ Yes ; truth of form, color, chiaroscuro. They are worthy to 
occupy me a life ; for they are eternal-r-or at least that which 
they express ; and if I am to get at the symbolized unseen, it 
must be through the beauty of the symbolizing phenomenon. 
If I, who live by art, for art, in art, or you either, who seem as 
much a born artist as myself, am to have a religion, it must be 
a worship of the fountain of art — of the 

Spirit of beauty, who doth consecrate 
With his own hues whate’er he shines upon.’ 

‘ As poor Shelley has it ; and much peace of mind it gave 
him !’ answered Lancelot. ‘ I have grown sick lately of such 
dreary tinsel abstractions. When you look through the glitter 
of the words, your ‘ spirit of beauty’ simply means certain shapes 
and colors which please you in beautiful things and in beautiful 
people.’ 

‘ Vile nominalist ! renegade from the ideal and all its glories !* 
said Claude, laughing. 


52 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


‘ I don’t care sixpence now for the ideal ! I want not beauty, 
but some beautiful thing — a woman, perhaps,’ and he sighed. 
‘ But at least a person — a living, loving person — all lovely itself, 
and giving loveliness to all things ! If I must have an ideal, 
let it be, for mercy’s sake, a realized one.’ 

Claude opened his sketch-book. 

^We shall get swamped in these metaphysical oceans, my 
dear dreamer. But lo, here come a couple, as near ideals as 
any in these degenerate days — the two poles of beauty ; the 
milieu of whicli would be Venus with us Pagans, or the Virgin 
Mary with the Catholics. Look at them ! Honoria the dark 
— symbolic of passionate depth ; Argemone the fair, type of in- 
tellectual light ! Oh, that I were a Zeuxis to unite them in- 
stead of having to paint them in two separate pictures, and split 
perfection in half, as every thing is split in this piecemeal 
world !’ 

‘You will have the honor of a sitting this afternoon, I sup- 
pose, from both beauties V 

‘ I hope so, for my own sake. There is no path left to im- 
mortality, or bread either, now for us poor artists but portrait- 
painting.’ 

‘ I envy you your path when it leads through such Elysiums,’ 
said Lancelot. 

‘ Come here, gentlemen both !’ cried Argemone from the 
bridge. 

‘ Fairly caught !’ grumbled Lancelot. ‘ You must go, at 
least ; my lameness will excuse me, I hope.’ 

The two ladies were accompanied by Bracebridge, a gazelle 
which he had given Argemone, and a certain miserable cur of 
Honoria’s adopting, who plays an important part in this story, 
and, therefore, deserves a little notice. Honoria had rescued 
him from a watery death in the village pond, by means of the 
colonel, who had revenged himself for a pair of wet feet by 
utterly corrupting the dog’s morals, and teaching him every 
week to answer to some fresh scandalous name. 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


53 


But Lancelot was not to escape. Instead of moving on, as 
he had hoped, the party stood looking over the bridge, and 
talking — he took for granted, poor thin-skinned fellow — of him. 
And for once his suspicions were right ; for he overheard Arge- 
mone say — 

‘ I wonder how Mr. Smith can be so rude as to sit there in 
my presence over his stupid perch ! Smoking those horrid 
cigars, too ! How selfish those field-sports do make men !’ 

‘ Thank you !’ said the colonel, with a low bow. Lancelot rose, 

‘If a country girl, now, had spoken in that tone,’ said he to 

himself, ‘ it would have been called at least ‘ saucy’ but 

Mammon’s elect ones may do any thing. Well — here I come, 
limping to my new tyrant’s feet, like Goethe’s bear to Lili’s.’ 

She drew him away, as women only know how, from the 
rest of the party, who were chatting and laughing with Claude. 
She had shown off her fancied indifference to Lancelot before 
them, and now began in a softer voice, — 

‘ Why will you be so shy and lonely, Mr. Smith V 

‘ Because I am not fit for your society.’ 

‘ Who tells you so ? Why will you not become so ?’ 

Lancelot hung down his head. 

‘ As long as fish and game are your only society, you will 
become more and more morne and self-absorbed.’ 

‘ Really, fish were the last things of which I was thinking 
when you came. My whole heart was filled with the beauty 
of nature, and nothing else.’ 

There was an opening for one of Argemone’s preconcerted 
orations. 

‘ Had you no better occupation,’ she said, gently, ‘ than 
nature, the first day of returning to the open air after so fright- 
ful and dangerous an accident? WerS" there no thanks due to 
One above ?’ 

Lancelot understood her. 

‘ How do you know that I was not even then showing my 
thankfulness V 


54 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


‘ What ! with a cigar and a fishing-rod V 

‘ Certainly. Why not ?’ 

Argemone really could not tell at the moment. The answer 
upset her schemes entirely. 

‘ Might not that very admiration of nature have been an act 
of worship V continued our hero. ‘ How can we better glorify 
the worker, than by delighting in his work V 

‘ Ah !’ sighed the lady, ‘ why trust to these self-willed 
methods, and neglect the noble and exquisite forms which the 
Church has prepared for us as embodiments for every feeling 
of our hearts V 

‘ Every feeling. Miss Lavington V 

Argemone hesitated She had made the good old stock as- 
sertion, as in duty bound ; but she could not help recollecting 
that there were several Popish books of devotion at that mo- 
ment on her table, which seemed to her to patch a gap or two 
in the Prayer-book. 

‘ My temple as yet,’ said Lancelot, ‘ is only the heaven and 
the earth ; my church-music I can hear all day long, whenever 
I have the sense to be silent, and ‘ hear my mother sing my 
priests and preachers are every bird and bee, every flower and 
cloud. Am I not well furnished ? Do you want to reduce my 
circular infinite chapel to an oblong hundred-foot one ? My 
sphere-harmonies to the Gregorian tones in four parts ? My 
world-wide priesthood, with their endless variety of costume, to 
one not over-educated gentleman in a white sheet ? And my 
dreams of naiads and flower-fairies, and the blue-bells ringing 
God’s praises, as they do in The Story without an End^ for the 
gross reality of naughty charity children, with their pockets full 
of apples, bawling out Hebrew psalms of which they neither 
feel nor understand a word ?’ 

Argemone tried to look very much shocked at this piece of 
bombast. Lancelot evidently meant it as such, but he eyed 
her all the while as if there was solemn earnest under the 
surface. 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


55 


* Oh, Mr. Smith !’ she said, ‘ how can you dare talk so of a 
liturgy compiled by the wisest and holiest of all countries and 
ages ? You revile that of whose beauty you are not qualrfiea 
to judge r 

‘ There must be a beauty in it all, or such as you are would 
not love it.- 

‘ Oh,’ she said hopefully, ‘ that you would but try the Church 
system ! How you would find it harmonize and methodize 
every day, every thought, for you ! But I can not explain my- 
self. Why not go to our vicar, and open your doubts to 
him V 

‘ Pardon, but you must excuse me.’ 

‘ Why ? He is one of the saintliest of men !’ 

‘ To tell the truth, I have been to him already.’ 

‘ You do not mean it ! And what did he tell you V 

‘ What the rest of the world does — hearsays.’ 

‘ But did you not find him most kind P 

‘ I went to him to be comforted and guided. He received 
me as a criminal. He told me that my first duty was peni- 
tence ; that, as long as I lived the life I did, he could not dare 
to cast his pearls before swine by answering my doubts ; that I 
was in a state incapable of appreciating spiritual truths ; and, 
therefore, he had no right to tell me any.’ 

‘ And what did he tell you ?’ 

‘Several spiritual lies instead, I thought. He told me, 
hearing me quote Schiller, to beware of the Germans, for they 
were all Pantheists at heart. I asked him whether he included 
Lange and Bunsen, and it appeared that he had never read a 
German book in his life. He then flew furiously at Mr. Car- 
lyle, and I found that all he knew of him was from a certain 
review in the Quarterly, He called Boehmen a theosophie 
Atheist. I should have burst out at that, had I not read the 
very words in a High Church review the day before, and 
hoped that he was not aware of the impudent falsehood he 
was retailing. Whenever I feebly interposed an objection to 


56 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


any thing he said (for, after all, he talked on), he told me to 
hear the Catholic Church. I asked him which Catholic 
Church ? He said the English. I asked him whether it was 
to be the Church of the sixth century, or the thirteenth, or the 
seventeenth, or the eighteenth ? He told me the one and eter- 
nal Church, which belonged as much to the nineteenth century 
as to the first. I begged to know whether, then, I was to hear 
the Church according to Simeon, or according to Newman, or 
according to St. Paul ; for they seemed to me a little at va- 
riance ? He told me, austerely enough, that the mind of the 
Church was embodied in her Liturgy and Articles. To wLich 
I answered, that the mind of the episcopal clergy might, per- 
haps, be ; but, then, how happened it that they were always 
quarreling and calling hard names about the sense of those 
very documents ? And so I left him, assuring him that, living 
in the nineteenth century, I wanted to hear the Church of the 
nineteenth century, and no other ; and should be most happy 
to listen to her, as soon as she had made up her mind what to 
say.’ 

Argemone was angry and disappointed. She felt she could 
not cope with Lancelot’s quaint logic, which, however unsound, 
cut deeper into questions than she had yet looked for herself. 
Somehow, too, she was tongue-tied before him just when she 
wanted to be most eloquent in behalf of her principles ; and 
that fretted her still more. But his manner puzzled her most 
of all. First he would run on with his face turned away, as if 
soliloquizing out into the air, and then suddenly look round at 
her with most fascinating humility ; and then, in a moment, a 
dark shade would pass over his countenance, and he would 
look like one possessed, and his lips wreathe in a sinister arti- 
ficial smile, and his wild eyes glare through and through her 
with such cunning understanding of himself and her, that, for 
the first time in her life, she quailed and felt frightened, as if 
in the power of a madman. She turned hastily away to shake 
off the spell. 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


57 


He sprung after her, almost on his knees, and looked up into 
her beautiful face with an imploring cry. 

‘ What, do you too, throw me off? Will you, too, treat the 
poor wild uneducated sportsman as a Pariah and ^n outcast 
because he is not ashamed to be a man ? — because he can not 
stuff his soul’s hunger with cut-and-dried hearsays, but dares to 
think for himself? — because he wants to believe things, and 
dare not be satisfied with only believing that he ought to be- 
lieve them V 

She paused, astonished. 

‘ Ah, yes,’ he went on, ‘ I hoped too much ! What right had 
I to expect that you would understand me ? What right, still 
more, to expect that you would stoop, any more than the rest 
of the world, to speak to me, as if I could become any thing 
better than the wild hog I seem ? Oh, yes ! — the chrysalis has 
no butterfly in it, of course ! — Stamp on the ugly, motionless 
thing ! And yet — you look so beautiful and good ! — are all 
my dreams to perish, about the Alrunen and prophet-maidens, 
how they charmed our old fighting, hunting forefathers into 
purity and sweet obedience among their Saxon forests ? Has 
woman forgotten her mission — to look at the heart and have 
mercy, while cold man looks at the act and condemns ? Do 
you, too, like the rest of mankind, think no-belief better than 
misbelief ; and smile on hypocrisy, lip-assent, practical Atheism, 
sooner than on the unpardonable sin of making a mistake ? 
Will you, like the rest of this wise world, let a man’s spirit rot 
asleep into the pit, if he will only lie quiet and not disturb your 
smooth respectabilities ; but if he dares, in waking, to yawn in 
an unorthodox manner, knock him on the head at once, and 
‘ break the bruised reed,’ and * quench the smoking-flax ?’ And 
yet you church-goers have ‘ renounced the world !’ ’ 

‘ What do you want, in Heaven’s name ?’ asked Argemone, 
half terrified. 

‘I want you to tell me that. Here I am, with youth, 
health, strength, money, every blessing of life- — ^but one ; and 
C * 


58 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


I am utterly miserable. I want some one to tell me what 1 
want.’ 

‘ Is it not that you want — religion V 

‘I see hundreds who have what you call religion, with whom 
I should scorn to change my irreligion.’ 

‘But, Mr. Smith, are you not — are you not very wicked? 
They tell me so,’ said Argemone, with an effort. ‘ And is not 
that the cause of your disease V 

Lancelot laughed. 

‘ No, fairest prophetess, it is the disease itself. ‘ Why am I 
what I am, when I know more and more daily what I could 
be ?’ — That is the mystery ; and my sins are the fruit, and not 
the root of it. Who will explain that ?’ 

Argemone began, — 

‘ The Church ’ 

‘ Oh, Miss Lavington,’ cried he, impatiently, ‘ will you, too, 
send me back to that abstraction ? I came to you, however 
presumptuous, for living, human advice to a living, human 
heart ; and will you pass off on me that Proteus-dream the 
Church, which in every man’s mouth has a different meaning ? 
In one book, meaning a method of education, only it has never 
been carried out ; in another, a system of polity, — only it has 
never been realized ; — now a set of words written in books, on 
whose meaning all are divided ; now a body of men, who are 
daily excommunicating each other as heretics and apostates ; 
now a universal idea ; now the narrowest and most exclusive 
of all parties. Keally, before you ask me to hear the Church, 
I have a right to ask you to define what the Church is.’ 

‘ Our Articles define it,’ said Argemone, dryly. 

‘ The ‘ Visible Church,’ at least, it defines as a company of 
faithful men, in which,’ &c. But how does it define the ‘ Invis- 
ible’ one ? And what does faithful mean ? What if I thought 
Cromwell and Pierre Leroux infinitely more faithful men in 
their way, and better members of the ‘ Invisible Church,’ than 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


59 


the torturer-pedant Laud, or the facing-both-ways Protestant- 
Manichee Taylor 

It was lucky for the life of young Love that the discussion 
went no further : Argemone was becoming scandalized beyond 
all measure. But, happily, the colonel interposed, — 

‘ Look here, tell me if you know for whom this sketch is 
meant V 

‘ Tregarva, the keeper : who can doubt V answered they 
Doth at once. 

‘ Has not Mellot succeeded perfectly V 

‘ Yes,’ said Lancelot. ‘ But what wonder, with such a noble 
subject ! What a grand benevolence is enthroned on that lofty 
forehead !’ 

‘ Oh, you would say so, indeed,’ interposed Honoria, * if you 
knew him ! The stories that I could tell you about him I How 
he will go into cottages, read to sick people by the hour, dress 
the children, cook their food for them, as tenderly as any woman ! 
I found out last winter, if you will believe it, that he lived on 
bread and water, to give out of his own wages — which are 
barely twelve shillings a-week — five shillings a week for more 
than two months to a poor laboring man, to prevent his going 
to the workhouse, and being parted from his wife and children. 

‘ Noble, indeed !’ said Lancelot. ‘ I do not wonder now at 
the effect his conversation just now had on me.’ 

‘ Has he been talking to you V said Honoria, eagerly. ‘ He 
seldom speaks to any one.’ 

‘ He has to me ; and so well, that were I sure that the poor 
were as ill off as he says, and that I had the power of alter- 
ing the system a hair, I could find it in my heart to excuse all 
political grievance-mongers, and turn one myself.’ 

Claude Mellot clapped his white woman-like hands. 

^ Bravo ! bravo ! Oh wonderful conversion ! Lancelot has 
at last discovered that, beside the ‘ glorious Past,’ there is a 
Present worthy of his sublime notice ! We may now hope, 
in time, that he will discover the existence of a Future !’ 


60 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


‘ But, Mr Mellot,’ said Honoria, ‘ why have you been so 
unfaithful to your original ? why have you, like all artiste^ 
been trying to soften and refine on your model ?’ 

‘ Because, my dear lady, we are bound to see every thing 
in its ideal, — not as it is, but as it ought to be, and will be, 
when the vices of this pitiful civilized world are exploded, and 
sanitary reform, and a variety of occupation, and harmonious 
education, let each man fulfill in body and soul the idea which 
God embodied in him.’ 

‘ Fourierist !’ cried Lancelot, laughing. ‘ But surely you 
never saw a face which had lost by wear less of the divine 
image ? How thoroughly it exemplifies your great law of 
Protestant art, that ‘the Ideal is best manifested in the Peculiar.’ 
How classic, how independent of clime or race, is its bland, ma- 
jestic self-possession ! how thoroughly Norse its massive square- 
ness !’ 

‘And yet, as a Cornishman, he should be no Norseman.’ 

‘ I beg your pardon ! Like all noble races, the Cornish owe 
their nobleness to the impurity of their blood — to its perpetual 
loans from foreign veins. See how the serpentine curve of his 
nose, his long nostril, and protruding, sharp-cut lips, mark his 
share of Phoenician or Jewish blood ! how Norse again, that 
dome-shaped forehead ! how Celtic those dark curls, that rest- 
less gray eye, with its ‘swinden blicken,’ like Von Troneg Ha- 
gen’s in the Niehelungen Lied /’ 

He turned : Honoria was devouring his words. He saw it, 
for he was in love, and young love makes man’s senses as keen 
as woman’s. 

‘ Look ! look at him now !’ said Claude, in a low voice. 
‘ How he sits, with his hands on his knees, the enormous size 
t.i his limbs quite concealed by the careless grace, with his 
Egyptian face, like some dumb granite Memnon !’ 

‘ Only waiting,’ said Lancelot, ‘ for the day-star to arise on 
liim and wake him into voice.’ 

He looked at Honoria as he spoke. She blushed angrily ; 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


61 


and yet a sort of sympathy arose from that moment between 
Lancelot and herself. 

Our hero feared he had gone too far, and tried to turn the 
subject off. 

The smooth mill-head was alive with rising trout. 

•What a huge fish leapt then!’ said Lancelot, carelessly; 
and close to the bridge, too 1’ 

Honoria looked round, and uttered a piercing scream. 

‘Oh, my dog! my dog! Mops is in the river! That 
horrid gazelle has butted him in, and he’ll be drowned !’ 

Alas ! it was too true. There, a yard above the one open 
hatchway, through which the whole force of the stream was 
rushing, was the unhappy Mops, alias Scratch, alias Dirty 
Dick, alias Jack Sheppard, paddling, and sneezing, and wink- 
ing, his little bald muzzle turned piteously upward to the sky. 

‘He will be drowned !’ quoth the colonel. 

There was no doubt of it ; and so Mops thought, as shiver- 
ing and whining, he plied every leg, while the glassy current 
dragged him back and back, and Honoria sobbed like a child. 

The colonel lay down on the bridge, and caught at him : his 
arm was a foot too short. In a moment the huge form of Tre- 
garva plunged solemnly into the w'ater, with a splash like seven 
salmon, and Mops was jerked out over the colonel’s head high 
and dry on to the bridge. 

‘ You'll be drowned, at least !’ shouted the colonel, with an 
oath of Uncle Toby’s own. 

Tregarva saw his danger, made one desperate bound upward, 
and missed the bridge. The colonel caught at him, tore off a 
piece of his collar — the calm, solemn face of the keeper flashed 
past beneath him, and disappeared through the roaring gate. 

They rushed to the other side of the bridge — caught one 
glimpse of a dark body fleeting and rolling down the foam-way, 
— The colonel leapt the bridge-rail like a deer, rushed out along 
the buck-stage, tore off his coat, and sprung headlong into the 
boiling pool, ‘rejoicing in his might, as old Homer would sav 


62 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


Lancelot, forgetting his crutches, was dashing after him, when 
he felt a soft hand clutching at his arm. 

‘Lancelot! Mr. Smith I’ cried Argemone. ‘You shall not 
go I You are too ill — weak ’ 

‘ A fellow-creature’s life I’ 

‘ What is his life to yours ?’ she cried, in a tone of deep pas- 
sion. And then, imperiously, ‘ Stay here, I command you 1’ 

The magnetic touch of her hand thrilled through his whole 
frame. She had called him Lancelot ! He shrunk down, and 
stood spell-bound. 

‘ Good heavens 1’ she cried ; ‘ look at my sister 1’ 

Out on the extremity of the buck-stage) how she got there 
neither they nor she ever knew (crouched Honoria, her face 
idiotic with terror, while she stared with bursting eyes into the 
foam. A shriek of disappointment rose from her lips, as in a 
moment the colonel’s weather-worn head reappeared above, 
looking for all the world like an old gray shiny-painted seal. 

‘ Poof I tally-ho ! Poof 1 poof 1 Heave me a piece of wood, 
Lancelot, my boy 1’ And he disappeared again. 

They looked round, there was not a loose bit near. Claude 
ran off toward the house. Lancelot, desperate, seized the 
bridge-rail, tore it off by sheer strength, and hurled it far into 
the pool. Argemone saw it, and remembered it, like a true 
woman. Ay, be as Manichsean -sentimental as you will, fair 
ladies, physical prowess, that Eden-right of manhood, is sure to 
tell upon your hearts I 

Again the colonel’s grizzled head reappeared, — and, oh, joy ! 
beneath it a draggled knot of black curls. In another instant 
he had hold of the rail, and, quietly floating down to the shal- 
low, dragged the lifeless giant high and dry on a patch of 
gravel. 

Honoria never spoke. She rose, walked quickly back along 
the beam, passed Argemone and Lancelot without peeing them, 
and firmly but hurriedly led the way round the pool-side. 

Before they arrived at the bank, the colonel had carried Tre- 


NEW ACTORS, AND A NEW STAGE. 


63 


garva to it Lancelot and two or three workmen, whom his 
cries had attracted, lifted the body on to the meadow. 

Honoria knelt quietly down on the grass, and watched, silent 
and motionless, the dead face with her wide awe-struck eyes. 

‘ God bless her for a kind soul !’ whispered the wan weather- 
beaten field-drudges, as they crowded over the body. 

‘ Get out of the way, my men !’ quoth the colonel. ‘ Too 
many cooks spoil the broth.’ And he packed off one here and 
another there for necessaries, and commenced trying every re- 
storative means with the ready coolness of a practiced surgeon ; 
while Lancelot, whom he ordered about like a baby, gulped 
down a great choking lump of envy, and then tasted the rich 
delight of forgetting himself in admiring obedience to a real 
superior. 

But there Tregarva lay lifeless, with folded hands, and a quiet 
satisfied smile, while Honoria watched and watched with parted 
lips, unconscious of the presence of every one. 

Five minutes ! — ten ! 

‘ Carry him to the house,’ said the colonel, in a despairing 
tone, after another attempt. 

‘ He moves !’ ‘ ISTo !’ ‘ He does !’ ‘ He breathes !’ ‘ Look 

at his eyelids !’ 

Slowly his eyes opened. 

‘ Where am I ? All gone ? Sweet dreams — blessed dreams !’ 

His eyes met Honoria’s. One big deep sigh swelled to his 
lips and burst. She seemed to recollect herself, rose, passed 
her arm through Argemone’s, and walked slowly away. 


CHAPTEE IV 


AN" ‘inglorious MILTON.’ 

Argemone, sweet prude, thought herself bound to read 
Honoria a lecture that night, on her reckless exhibition of 
feeling ; but it profited little. The most consummate cunning 
could not have baffled Argemone’s suspicions more completely 
than her sister’s utter simplicity. She cried just as bitterly 
about Mops’ danger as about the keeper’s, and then laughed 
heartily at Argemone’s solemnity ; till at last, when pushed a 
little too hard, she broke out into something very like a passion, 
and told her sister, bitterly enough, that ‘ she was not accus- 
tomed to see men drowned every day, and begged to hear no 
more about the subject.’ Whereat Argemone prudently held 
her tongue, knowing that under all Honoria’s tenderness lay a 
volcano of passionate determination, which was generally kept 
down by her affections, but was just as likely to be maddened 
by them. And so this conversation only went to increase the 
unconscious estrangement between them, though they continued, 
as sisters will do, to lavish upon each other the most extrava- 
gant protestations of affection-avowing to live and die only for 
each other — and believing honestly, sweet souls, that they felt 
all they said ; till real imperious Love came in, in one case of 
the two at least, shouldering all other affections right and left ; 
and then the two beauties discovered, as others do, that it is not 
so possible or reasonable as they thought for a woman to sac-' 
rifice herself^ and her lover for the sake of her sister or her 
friend. 


AN ‘ INGLORIOUS MILTON.’ 


65 


Next morning Lancelot and the colonel started out to Tre- 
garva’s cottage, on a mission of inquiry. They found the giant 
propped up in bed with pillows, his magnificent features looking 
m their paleness more than ever like a granite Memnon. Be- 
fore him lay an open ‘ Pilgrim’s Progress,’ and a drawer filled 
with feathers and furs, which he was busily manufacturing into 
trout flies, reading as he worked. The room was filled with 
nets, guns, and keepers’ tackle, while a well-filled shelf of books 
hung by the wall. 

‘ Excuse my rising, gentlemen,’ he said, in his slow, staid 
voice, ‘ but I am very weak, in spite of the Lord’s goodness to 
me. You are very kind to think of coming to my poor 
cottage.’ 

‘ Well, my man,’ said the colonel, ‘ and how are you after 
your cold-bath ? You are the heaviest fish I ever landed !’ 

‘ Pretty well, thank God, and you, sir. I am in your debt, 
sir, for the dear life. How shall I ever repay you ?’ 

‘ Repay ? my good fellow ? You would have done as much 
for me.’ 

‘ May be ; but you did not think of that when you jumped 
in ; and no more must I in thanking you. God knows how a 
poor miner’s son will ever reward you ; but the mouse repaid 
the lion, says the story, and, at all events, I can pray for you. 
By-the-by, gentlemen, I hope you have brought up some 
trolling- tackle V 

‘ We came up to see you, and not to fish,’ said Lancelot, 
charmed with the stately courtesy of the man. 

‘ Many thanks, gentlemen ; but old Harry Verney was in 
here just now, and had seen a great jack strike, at the tail of 
the lower reeds. With this fresh wind he will run till noon ; 
and you are sure of him with a dace. After that, he will not 
he up again on the shadows till sunset. He works the works 
of darkness, and comes not to the light, because his deeds are 
evil.’ -• 

Lancelot laughed. ‘ He does but follow his kind, poor fellow.’ 


66 


AN ‘inglorious MILTON.’ 


‘ No doubt, sir, no doubt ; all the Lord’s works are good ; 
but it is a wonder why he should have made wasps, now, and 
blights, and vermin, and jack, and such evil-featured things, 
that carry spite and cruelty in their very faces — a great won- 
der. Do you think, sir, all those creatures were in the garden 
of Eden V 

‘You are getting too deep for me,’ said Lancelot. ‘But 
why trouble your head about fishing V 

‘ I beg your pardon for preaching to you, sir. I’m sure I 
forgot myself. If you will let me. I’ll get up, and get you a 
couple of bait from the stew. You’ll do us keepers a kindness, 
and prevent sin, sir, if you’ll catch him. The squire will swear 
sadly — the Lord forgive him — ^if he hears of a pike in the 
trout runs. I’ll get up, if I may trouble you to go into the 
next room a minute.’ 

‘ Lie still, for Heaven’s sake. Why bother your head about 
pike now V 

‘ It is my business, sir, and I am paid for it, and I must do 
it thoroughly ; — and abide in the calling wherein I am called,’ 
he added, in a sadder tone. 

‘ You seem to be fond enough of it, and to know enough 
about it, at all events,’ said the colonel, ‘ tying flies here on a 
sick-bed.’ 

‘ As for being fond of it, sir — those creatures of the water 
teach a man many lessons ; and when I tie flies, I earn books.’ 

‘How then?’ 

‘ I send my flies all over the county, sir, to Salisbury and 
Hungerford, and up to Winchester, even ; and the money buys 
me many a wise book — all my delight is in reading ; perhaps 
so much the worse for me.’ 

‘ So much the better, say,’ answered Lancelot, warmly. ‘ Fll 
give you an order for a couple of pounds’ worth of flieo at once.’ 

The Lord reward you, sir,’ answered the giant. 

‘ And you shall make me the same quantity,’ said the colonel. 
‘You can make salmon-flies?’ 


AN ‘inglorious MILTON.’ 


(j1 


‘ I made a lot by pattern for an Irish gent, sir.’ 

‘ Well, then, we’ll send you some Norway patterns, and some 
golden pheasant and parrot feathers. We’re going to Norway 
this summer you know, Lancelot ’ 

Tregarva looked up with a quaint, solemn hesitation. 

‘ If you please, gentlemen, you’ll forgive a man’s conscience.’ 
‘ Well V 

‘ But I’d not like to be a party to the making of Norway 
flies.’ 

‘ Here’s a Protectionist, with a vengeance !’ laughed the colo- 
nel. ‘Do you want to keep all us fishermen in England ? eh ? 
to fee English keepers V 

‘ No, sir. There’s pretty fishing in Norway, I hear, and poor 
folk that want money more than we keepers. God knows we 
get too much — we that hang about great houses and serve great 
folks’ pleasure — you toss the money down our throats, without 
our deserving it ; and we spend it as we get it — a deal too fast 
— while hard-working laborers are starving.’ 

‘ And yet you would keep us in England V 

‘ Would God I could !’ 

‘ Why then, my good fellow ?’ asked Lancelot, who was get- 
ting intensely interested with the calm, self-possessed earnest- 
ness of the man, and longed to draw him out. 

The colonel yawned. 

‘ Well, I’ll go and get myself a couple of bait. Don’t you 
stir, my good parson-keeper. Down charge, I say ! Odd if I 
don’t find a bait-net, and a rod for myself, under the verandah.’ 

‘ You will, colonel. I remember, now, I set it there last 
morning ; but the water washed many things out of my brains, 
and some things into them — and I forgot it, like a goose.’ 

‘ Well, good-by, and lie still. I know what a drowning is, 
and more than one. A day and a night have I been in the 
deep, like the man in the good book ; and bed' is the best of 
medicine for a ducking ;’ and the colonel shook him kindly by 
the hand and disappeared. 


68 


AN INGLORIOUS MILTON. 


Lancelot sat down by the keeper’s bed. 

‘You’ll get those fish-hooks into your trowsers. sir ; and this 
is a poor place to sit down in.’ 

‘ I want you to say your say out, friend, fish-hooks or none.^ 

The keeper looked warily at the door, and when the colonel 
had passed the window, balancing the trolling-rod on his chin, 
and whistling merrily, he began, — 

‘ ‘ A day and a night have I been in the deep !’ — and brought 
back no more from it ! And yet the Psalms say how they that 
go down to the sea in ships see the works of the Lord ! — If the 
Lord has opened their eyes to see them, that must mean.’ 

Lancelot waited. 

‘ What a gallant gentleman that is, and a valiant man of 
war. I’ll warrant, — and to have seen all the wonders he has, 
and yet to be wasting his span of life like that !’ 

Lancelot’s heart smote him. 

‘ One would think, sir You’ll pardon me for speakina 

out.’ And the noble face worked, as he murmured to himself 
‘ When ye are brought before kings and princes for my name’s 
sake. — I dare not hold my tongue, sir. I am as one risen from 
the dead,’ and his face flashed up into sudden enthusiasm — 
‘ and woe to me if I speak not. Oh, why, why are you gentle- 
men running off to Norway, and foreign parts, whither God has 
not called you ? Are there no graves in Egypt, that you must 
go out to die in the wilderness V 

Lancelot, quite unaccustomed to the language of the Dissent- 
ing poor, felt keenly the bad taste of the allusion. 

‘What can you mean ?’ he asked. 

‘ Pardon me, sir, if I can not speak plainly ; but are there nol 
temptations enough here in England that you must go to waste 
all your gifts, your scholarship, and your rank, far away there 
out of the sound of a church-going bell ? I don’t deny it’s a 
great temptation. I have read of Norway wonders in a book 
of one Miss Martineau, with a strange name.’ 

‘ Feats on the Fiord T 


AN ‘inglorious MILTON.’ 


69 


‘ That’s it, sir. Her books are grand books to set one a-think- 
ing ; but she don’t seem to see the Lord in all things, does she, 
sir V 

Lancelot parried the question. 

‘ You are wandering a little from the point.’ 

‘ So I am, and I thank you for the rebuke. There’s where I 
find you scholars have the advantage of us poor fellows, who 
pick up knowledge as we can. Your book-learning makes you 
stick to the point so much better. You are taught how to 
think. After all — God forgive me if I’m wrong ! — but I some- 
times think there must be more good in that human wisdom, 
and philosophy falsely so called, than we Wesley ans hold. Oh, 
sir, what a blessing is a good education ! What you gentle- 
men might do with it, if you did but see your own power ! 
Are there no fish in England, sir, to be caught ? precious fish, 
with immortal souls ? And is there not One who has said, 

‘ Come with me, and I will make you fishers of men V ’ 

‘ Would you have us all turn parsons V 
‘ Is no one to do God’s work except the parson, sir ? Oh, 
the game that you rich folks have in your hands, if you would 
but play it ! Such a man as Colonel Bracebridge, now, with 
the tongue of the serpent, who can charm any living soul he likes 
to his will, as a stoat charms a rabbit. Or you, sir, with your 
tongue ; — ^you have charmed one precious creature already. I 
can see it : though neither of you know it, yet I know it.’ 
Lancelot started, and blushed crimson. 

‘ Oh, that I had your tongue, sir 1’ And the keeper blushed 
crimson too, and went on hastily, — 

‘ But why could you not charm all alike ? Do not the poor 
want you as well as the rich V 

‘ What can I do for the poor, my good fellow ? And what 
do they want ? Have they not houses, work, a church, and 
schools, — and poor-rates to fall back on V 
The keeper smiled sadly. 

‘To fall back on, indeed ! and down on, too. At all events,. 


70 


AN ‘inglorious MILTON.’ 


you rich might help to make Christians of them, and men of 
them. For I’m beginning to fancy strangely, in spite of all the 
preachers say, that, before ever you can make them Christians, 
you must make them men and women.’ 

‘ Are they not so already V 

‘ Oh, sir, go and see ! How can a man be a man in those 
crowded styes, sleeping and packed together like Irish pigs in a 
steamer, never out of the fear of want, never knowing any 
higher amusement than the beer-shop ? Those old Greeks and 
Romans, as I read, were more like men than half our English 
laborers. Go and see 1 Ask that sweet heavenly angel. Miss 
Honoria,’ — and the keeper again blushed, — ‘and she, too, will 
tell you. I think sometimes, if she had been born and bred 
like her father’s tenants’ daughters, to sleep w^here they sleep, 
and hear the talk they hear, and see the things they see, what 
would she have been now ? We mustn’t think of it.’ And the 
keeper turned his head away and fairly burst into tears. 

Lancelot was moved. 

‘ Are the poor very immoral, then V 

‘ You ask the rector, sir, how many children hereabouts are 
born within six months of the wedding-day. None of them 
marry, sir, till the devil forces them. There’s no sadder sight 
than a laborer’s wedding nowadays. You never see the pa- 
rents come with them. They just get another couple, that are 
keeping company, like themselves, and come sneaking into 
church, looking all over as if they were ashamed of it — and well 
they may be !’ 

‘ Is it possible V 

‘ I say, sir, that God makes you gentlemen, gentlemen, that you 
may see into these things. You give away your charities kindly 
enough, but you don’t know the folks you give to. If a few of 
you would but be like the blessed Lord, and stoop to go out of the 
road, just behind the hedge, for once, among the publicans and 
oarlots ! Were you ever at a country fair, sir ? Though I sup- 


AN ‘INGLORIOUS MILTON.’ 


71 


pose I am rude for fancying that you could demean yourself to 
such company.’ 

‘ I should not think it demeaning myself,’ said Lancelot, smi- 
ling ; ‘ but I never was at one, and I should like for once to see 
the real manners of the poor.’ 

‘ I’m no haunter of such places myself, God knows ; but — I 
see you’re in earnest now — will you come with me, sir, — for 
once ? for God’s sake, and the poor’s sake V 

‘ I shall be delighted.’ 

‘ Not after you’ve been there, I am afraid.’ 

‘Well, it’s a bargain when you are recovered. And, in the 
mean time, the squire’s orders are, that you lie by for a few days 
to rest ; and Miss Honoria’s too ; and she has sent you down 
some wine.’ 

‘ She thought of me, did she V And the still sad face blazed 
out radiant with pleasure, and then collapsed as suddenly into 
deep melancholy. 

Lancelot saw it, but said nothing ; and shaking him heartily 
by the hand, had his shake returned by an iron grasp, and slip- 
ped quietly out of the cottage. 

The keeper lay still, gazing on vacancy. Once he murmured 
to himself, — 

‘ Through strange ways — strange ways — and though he let 
them wander out of the road in the wilderness ; — ^we know how 
that goes on 

And then he fell into a fixed meditation — perhaps into a 
prayer. 


CHAPTER V, 


A SHAM IS WORSE THAN NOTHING, 

At last, after Lancelot had waited long in vain, came his 
cousin’s answer to the letter which I gave in my second 
chapter. 

‘ You are not fair to me, good cousin but I have 

given up expecting fairness from Protestants. I do not say that 
the front and the back of my head have different makers, any 

more than that doves and vipers have and yet I kill 

the viper when I meet him and so do you 

And yet, are we not taught that our animal nature is through- 
out equally viperous? The Catholic Church, at least, 

so teaches She believes in the corruption of human na- 

ture. She believes in the literal meaning of Scripture. She 
has no wish to paraphrase away St. Paul’s awful words, that 
‘ in his flesh dwelleth no good thing,’ by the unscientific euphem- 
isms of ‘ fallen nature’ or ‘ corrupt humanity.’ The boasted 
discovery of phrenologists, that thought, feeling, and passion 
reside in this material brain and nerves of ours, has ages ago 
been anticipated by her simple faith in the letter of Scripture ; 
a faith which puts to shame the irreverent vagueness and fan 
tastic private interpretations of those who make an idol of that 
very letter which they dare not take literally, because it makes 


against their self-willed theories .... 

‘ And so you call me douce and meek ? You should 

remember what I once was, Lancelot I, at least, have 


A SHAM IS WORSE THAN NOTHING. 


73 


not forgotten. ... I have not forgotten how that very animal 
nature, on the possession of which you seem to pride yourself, 
was in me only the parent of remorse. ... I know it too well 
not to hate and fear it. Why do you reproach me, if I try to 
abjure it, and cast away the burden which I am too weak to 
bear ? lam weak — Would you have me say that 1 am strong ? 
Would you have me try to be a Prometheus, while I am long- 
ing to be once more an infant on a mother’s breast ? Let me 

alone I am a weary child, who knows nothing, can do 

nothing, except lose its way in arguings and reasonings, and 
‘find no end, in wandering mazes lost.’ Will you reproach 

me, because when I see a soft cradle lying open for me 

with a Virgin Mother’s face smiling down all woman’s love 

above it I long to crawl into it, and sleep awhile ? 

I want loving, indulgent sympathy I want detailed, 

explicit guidance Ilave you, then, found so much of 

them in our former creed, that you forbid me to go to seek 
them elsewhere, in the Church which not only professes them 
as an organized system, but practices them .... as you would 
find in your first half-hour’s talk with one of Her priests .... 
true priests .... who know the heart of man, and pity, and 
console, and bear for their flock the burdens which they can not 
bear themselves. You ask me who will teach a fast young 
man ?....! answer, the Jesuit. Ay, start and sneer, at that 
delicate womanlike tenderness, that subtile instinctive sympathy, 
which you have never felt .... which is as new to me, alas, 
as it would be to you ! For if there be none nowadays to 
teach such as you, who is there who will teach such as me ? 
Do not fancy that I have not craved and searched for teachers 
. . . . I went to one party long ago, and they commanded me, 
as the price of their sympathy, even of any thing but their de- 
nunciations, to ignore, if not to abjure, all the very points on 
which I came for light — my love for the Beautiful and the 
Symbolic — my desire to consecrate and christianize it — my 
longing for a human voice to tell me with authority that I was 

D 


74 


A SHAM IS WORSE THAN NOTHING. 


forgiven — my desire to find some practical and palpable com 
munion between myself and the saints of old. They told me 
to cast away, as an accursed chaos, a thousand years of Chris- 
tian history, and believe that the devil had been for ages .... 
just the ages I thought noblest, most faithful, most interpene- 
trated with the thought of God .... triumphant over that 
church with which He had promised to be till the end of the 
world. No . . . by-the-by, they made two exceptions — of 
their own choosing. One in favor of the Albigenses .... who 
seemed to me, from the original documents, to have been very 
profligate Infidels, of whom the world was well rid ... . and 

the Piedmontese poor, simple, ill-used folk enough, 

but who certainly can not be said to have exercised much in- 
fluence on the destinies of mankind .... and all the rest was 
chaos and the pit. There never had been, never would be, a 
kingdom of God on earth, but only a few scattered individuals, 
each selfishly intent on the salvation of his own soul — without 
organization, without unity, without common purpose, without 
even a masonic sign whereby to know one another when they 
chanced to meet .... except Shibboleths which the hypocrite 
could ape, and virtues which the heathen have performed . . . 
Would you have had me accept such a ‘ Philosophy of History V 
‘ And then I went to another school .... or rather wan- 
dered up and down between those whom I have just described, 
and those who boast on their side prescriptive right, and apos- 
tolic succession .... and I found that their ancient chartei 
went back — just three hundred years .... and there derived 
its transmitted virtue, it seemed to me, by something very like 
obtaining goods on false pretenses, from the very church which 
it now anathematizes. Disheartened, but not hopeless, I asked 
how it was that the priesthood, whose hands bestowed the grace 
of ordination, could not withdraw it ... . whether, at least, 
the schismatic did not forfeit it by the very act of schism . . . . 
and instead of any real answer to that fearful spiritual dilemma, 
they set me down to folios of Nag’s head controversies . . . . 


A SHAM IS WORSE THAN NOTHING. 


75 


and myths of an Independent British Church, now represented, 
strangely enough, by those Saxons who, after its wicked refusal 
to communicate with them, exterminated it with fire and sword, 
and derived its own order from St. Gregory .... and deci- 
sions of mythical old councils (held by bishops of a diflferent 
faith and practice from their own), from which I was to pick 
the one point which made for them, and omit the nine which 
made against them, while I was to believe, by a stretch of im- 
agination .... or common honesty .... which I leave you 
to conceive, that the Church of Syria in the fourth century was, 
in doctrine, practice, and constitution, like that of England in 
the nineteenth! . . . And what was I to gain by all this? 
. . . . For the sake of what was I to strain logic and con- 
science ? To believe myself a member of the same body with 
all the Christian nations of the earth ? — to be able to hail the 
Frenchman, the Italian, the Spaniard, as a brother — to have 
hopes even of the German and the Swede .... if not in this 
life, still in the life to come ? l!^^o .... to be able still to sit 

apart from all Christendom in the exclusive pride of insular 
Pharisaism ; to claim for the modern littleness of England the 
infallibility which I denied to the primaeval mother of Christen- 
dom ; not to enlarge my communion to the Catholic, but ex- 
communicate, to all practical purposes, over and above the 
Catholics, all other Protestants except my own sect .... or 
rather, in practice, except my own party in my own sect .... 
And this was believing in one Catholic and Apostolic church ! 
.... this was to be my share of the communion of saints ! 
And these were the theories which were to satisfy a soul which 
longed for a kingdom of God on earth, which felt that unless 
the highest of His promises are a mythic dream, there must be 
some system on the earth commissioned to fulfill those promi- 
ses ; some authority divinely appointed to regenerate, and rule, 
and guide the lives of men, and the destinies of nations ; who 
must go mad, unless he finds that history is not a dreary aim- 
less procession of lost spirits descending into the pit, or that the 


76 


A SHAM IS WORSE THAN NOTHING. 


salvation of millions does not depend on an obscure and con- 
troverted hair’s breadth of ecclesiastical law. 

‘ I have tried them both, Lancelot, and found them wanting ; 
and now but one road remains. . . . Home, to the fountain- 
head ; to the mother of all the churches, whose fancied cruelty 
to her children can no more destroy her motherhood, than their 
eonfest rebellion can. . . . Shall I not hear her voice, when she, 
and she alone, cries to me, ‘ I have authority and commission 
from the King of kings to regenerate the world. History is a 
chaos, only because mankind has been ever rebelling against 
me, its lawful ruler .... and yet not a chaos .... for I still 
stand, and grow rooted on the rock of ages, and under my 
boughs are fowls of every wing. I alone have been and am 
consibtent, progressive, expansive, welcoming every race, and 
intellect, and character into its proper place in my great organ- 
ism .... meeting alike the wants of the king and the beg- 
gar, the artist and the devotee .... there is free room for all 
within my heaven- wide bosom. Infallibility is not the exclusive 
heritage of one proud and ignorant island, but of a system 
which knows no distinction of language, race, or clime. The 
communion of saints is not a bygone tale, for my saints, re- 
deemed from every age and every nation under heaven, still 
live, and love, and help, and intercede. The union of heaven 
and earth is not a barbaric myth ; for I have still my miracles, 
my Host, my exorcism, my absolution. The present rule of 
God is still, as ever, a living reality ; for I rule in His name, and 
fulfill all His will.’ 

‘ How can I turn away from such a voice ? What if some 
of her doctrines may startle my untutored and ignorant under- 
standing ? ... If she is the appointed teacher, she will know 
best what truths to teach. . . . The disciple is not above his 
master . . . or wise in requiring him to demonstrate the ab- 
strusest problems .... spiritual problems, too ... . before 
he allows his right to teach the elements. Humbly I must enter 
the temple porch ; gradually and trustfully proceed with my 


A SHAM IS WORSE THAN NOTHING. 


77 


initiation. . . . When that is past, and not before .... shall 
I be a fit judge of the mysteries of the inner shrine. 

‘ There .... I have written a long letter .... with my 
own heart’s blood. . . . Think over it well, before you despise 
it. . . . And if you can refute it for me, and sweep the whole 
away like a wild dream when one awakes, none will be more 
thankful — paradoxical as it may seem — than your unhappy 
Cousin.’ 

And Lancelot did consider that letter, and answered it as 
follows : 

‘ It is a relief to me at least, dear Luke, that you are going 
to Rome in search of a great idea, and not merely from super- 
stitious terror (as I should call it) about the ‘ salvation of your 
soul.’ And it is a new ana very important thought to me, 
that Rome’s scheme of this world, rather than of the next, 
forms her chief allurement. But as for that flesh and spirit 
question, or the apostolic succession one either ; all you seem, 
to me, as a looker-on, to have logically proved, is that Protes- 
tants, orthodox and unorthodox, must be a little more scientific 
and careful in their use of the terms. But as for adopting your 
use of them, and the consequences thereof — you must pardon 
me, and I suspect, them too. Not that. Any thing but that. 
Whatever is right, that is wrong. Better to be inconsistent in 
truth, than consistent in a mistake. And your Romish idea 
of man is a mistake — utterly wrong and absurd — except in the 
one requirement of righteousness and godliness, which Protes- 
tants and heathen philosophers have required, and do require 
just as much as you. My dear Luke, your ideal men and 
women won’t do — for they are not men and women at all, but 
what you call ‘saints’. . . . Your Calendar, your historic list 
of the Earth’s worthies, won’t do — not they, but others, are the 
people who have brought Humanity thus far. I don’t deny 
that there are great souls among them ; Beckets, and Hugh 
Grostetes, and Elizabeths of Hungary. But you are the last 
people to praise them, for you don’t understand them. ‘ Thierry 


*78 


A SHAM IS WORSE THAN NOTHING. 


honors Thomas a Becket more than all Canonizations and wor- 
shipers do, because he does see where the man’s true greatness 
lay, and you don’t. Why you may hunt all Surius for such a 
biography of a mediaeval worthy as Carlyle has given of your 
Abbot Samson. I have read, or tried to read, your Surius, 
and Alban Butler, and so forth — and they seemed to me bats 
and asses — One really pitied the poor saints and martyrs for 
having such blind biographers — such dunghill cocks, who over- 
looked the pearl of real human love and nobleness in them, in 
their greediness to snatch up and parade the rotten chaff’ of 
superstition, and self-torture, and spiritual dyspepsia, which had 
overlaid it. My dear fellow, that Calendar ruins your cause — 
You are ‘ sacres aristocrates’ — kings and queens, bishops and 
virgins by the hundred at one end ; a beggar or two at the 
other ; and but one real human lay St. Homobonus to fill up 
the great gulf between. A pretty list to allure the English 
middle-classes, or the Lancashire working-men ! — Almost as 
charmingly suited to England as the present free, industrious, 
enlightened, and moral state of that Eternal City, which has 
been blest with the visible presence and peculiar rule, temporal 
as well as spiritual, too, of your Dalai Lama. His pills do not 
seem to have had much practical effect there .... My good 
Luke, till he can show us a little better specimen of the king- 
dom of Heaven organized and realized on earth, in the country 
which does belong to him, soil and people, body and soul, we 
must decline his assistance in realizing that kingdom in coun- 
tries wdiich don’t belong to him. 

‘ If the state of Kome don’t show his idea of man and society 
to be a rotten lie, what proof would you have ? . . . . perhaps 
the charming results of a century of Jesuitocracy, as they were 
represented on the French stage in the year 1793. I can’t 
answer his arguments, you see, or yours either ; I am an Eng- 
lishman, and not a controversialist. The only answer I give is 
John Bull’s old dumb instructive ‘ Everlasting No !’ which he 
will stand by, if need be, with sharp shot and cold steel — ‘ Not 


A SHAM IS WORSE THAN NOTHING. 


79 


that ; any thing but that. No kingdom of Heaven at all for 
us, if the kingdom of Heaven is like that. No heroes at all 
for us, if their heroism is to consist in their being not-men. 
Better no society at all, but only a competitive wild beasts’-den, 
than a sham society. Better no faith, no hope, no love, no 
God, than shams thereof.’ I take my stand on fact and na- 
ture ; you may call them idols and phantoms ; I say they need 
be so no longer to any man, since Bacon has taught us to dis- 
cover the Eternal Laws under the outward phenomena. Here 
on blank materialism will I stand, and testify against all Reli- 
gions and Gods whatsoever, if they must needs be like that 
Roman religion, that Roman God. I don’t believe they need 
— not I. But if they need, they must go. We can not have 
a ‘ Deus quidam deceptor.’ If there be a God, these trees and 
stones, these beasts and birds must be His will, whatever else is 
not. My body, and brain, and faculties, and appetites must be 
his will, whatever else is not. Whatsoever I can do with them 
in accordance with the constitution of them and nature, must 
be His will, whatever else is not. Those laws of nature must 
reveal them, and be revealed by Him, whatever else is not. 
Man’s scientific conquest of nature must be one phase of His 
Kingdom on Earth, whatever else is not. I don’t deny that 
there are spiritual law^s which man is meant to obey — How can 
I, who feel in my own daily and inexplicable unhappiness the 
fruits of having broken them ? — But I do say, that those spirit- 
ual laws must be in perfect harmony with every fresh physical 
law which we discover : that they can not be intended to com- 
pete self-destructively with each other ; that the spiritual can 
not be intended to be perfected by ignoring or crushing the 
physical, unless God is a deceiver, and his universe a self-con- 
tradiction. And by this test alone will I try all theories, and 
dogmas, and spiritualities whatsoever — Are they in accordance 
with the laws of nature ? And therefore when your party com- 
pare sneeringly Romish Sanctity, and English Civilization, I 
say, Take you the Sanctity, and give me the Civilization ! The 


80 


A SHAM IS WORSE THAN NOTHING. 


one may be a dream, for it is unnatural ; the other can not be, 
for it is natural ; and not an evil in it at which you sneer but 
is discovered, day by day, to be owing to some infringement of 
the laws of nature. When we ‘ draw bills on nature,’ as Car- 
lyle says, ‘ she honors them,’ — our ships do sail ; our mills do 
work ; our doctors do cure ; our soldiers do fight. And she 
loes not honor yours ; for your Jesuits have, by their own con- 
ession, to lie, to swindle, to get even man to accept theirs for 
them. So give me the political economist, the sanitary refor- 
mer, the engineer ; and take you saints and virgins, relics and 
miracles. The spinning-jenny and the railroad, Cunard’s liners 
and the electric telegraph, are to me, if not to you, signs that 
we are, on some points at least, in harmony with the universe ; 
that there is a mighty spirit working among us, who can not 
be your anarchic and destroying Devil, and therefore may be 
the Ordering and Creating God.’ 

Which of them do you think, reader, had most right on his 
Bide ? 


CHAPTEE VI. 


VOGUE LA GALERE. 

Lancelot was now so far improved in health as to return 
to his little cottage ornce. He gave himself up freely to his 
new passion. With his comfortable fortune and good con- 
nections, the future seemed bright and possible enough as to 
circumstances. He knew that Argemone felt for him ; how 
much, it seemed presumptuous even to speculate, and as yet no 
golden-visaged meteor had arisen portentous in his amatory 
zodiac. No rich man had stepped in to snatch, in spite of all 
his own flocks and herds, at the poor man’s one ewe-lamb, and 
set him barking at all the world, as many a poor lover has to 
do in defence of his morsel of enjoyment, now turned into a 
mere bone of contention and loadstone for all hungry kites and 
crows. 

All that had to be done was to render himself worthy of 
her, and in doing so, to win her. And now he began to feel 
more painfully his ignorance of society, of practical life, and the 
outward present. He blamed himself angrily for having, as 
he now thought, wasted his time on ancient histories and 
foreign travels, while he neglected the living wonderful present, 
which weltered daily round him, every face embodying a living 
soul. For now he began to feel that those faces did hide living 
souls; formerly he had half believed — he had tried, but from 
laziness, to make himself wholly believe — that they were all 
empty masks, phantasies, without interest or significance for 


82 


VOGUE LA GALERE. 


liim. But, somehow, m the light of his new love for Arge- 
mone, the whole human race seemed' gloried, brought nearer, 
endeared to him. So it must be. He had spoken of a law 
wider than he thought in his fancy, that the angels might learn 
love for all by love for an individual. Do we not all learn 
love so ? Is it not the first touch of the mother’s bosom which 
awakens in the infant’s heart that spark of affection which is 
hereafter to spread itself out toward every human being, and 
to lose none of its devotion for its first object, as it expands it- 
self to innumerable new ones ? Is it not by love, too,— by 
looking into loving human eyes, by feeling the care of loving 
hands, — that the infant first learns that there exist other beings 
beside itself ? — that every body it sees expresses a heart and 
will like its own ? Be sure of it. Be sure that to have found 
the key to one heart is to have found the key to all ; that truly 
to love is truly to know ; and truly to love one, is the first step 
towards truly loving all who bear the same flesh and blood with 
the beloved. Like children, we must dress up even our unseen 
future in stage properties borrowed from the tried and palpable 
present, ere we can look at it without horror. We fear and 
hate the utterly unknown, and it only. Even pain we hate only 
when we can not know it ; when we can only feel it, without 
explaining it, and making it harmonize with our notions of our 
own deserts and destiny. And as for human beings, there 
surely it stands true, wherever else it may not, that all knowl- 
edge is love, and all love knowledge ; that even with the mean- 
est, we can not gain a glimpse into their inward trials and 
struggles, without an increase of sympathy and affection. 

Whether he reasoned thus or not, Lancelot found that his 
new interest in the working-classes was strangely quickened by 
his passion. It seemed the shortest, and clearest way toward a 
practical knowledge of the present. * Here,’ he said to him- 
self, ‘ in the investigation of existing relations between poor and 
rich, I shall gain more real acquaintance with English society, 
than by dawdling centures in exclusive drawing-rooms.’ 


VOGUE LA GALERE. 


83 


The inquiry had not yet presented itself to him as a duty ; 
perhaps so much the better, that it might be the more 
thoroughly a free-will offering of love. At least it opened a 
new field of amusement and knowledge ; it promised him now 
studies of human life ; and as he lay on his sofa and let his 
thoughts flow, Tregarva’s dark revelations began to mix them- 
selves with dreams about the regeneration of the Whitford 
poor, and those again with dreams about the heiress at Whit- 
ford ; and many a luscious scene and noble plan rose brightly 
detailed in his exuberant imagination. For Lancelot, like all 
born artists, could only think in a concrete form. He never 
worked out a subject without embodying it in some set ora? 
tion, dialogue, or dramatic castle in the air. 

But the more he dreamt, the more he felt that a material 
beauty of flesh and blood required a material house, baths and 
boudoirs, conservatories and carriages; a safe material purse, 
and fixed material society ; law, and order, and the established 
frame-work of society, gained an importance in his eyes which 
they had never had before, 

‘ Well,’ he said to himself, ‘ I am turning quite practical and 
auld-warld. Those old Greeks were not so far wrong when 
they said that what made men citizens, patriots, heroes, was the 
love of wedded wife and child.’ 

‘ Wedded wife and child !’ — He shrank in from the daring 
of the delicious thought, as if he had intruded without invita- 
tion into a hidden sanctuary, and looked round for a book to 
drive away the dazzling picture. But even there his thoughts 
were haunted by Argemone’s face, and 

When his regard 

Was raised by intense pensiveness, two eyes, 

Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought, 

And seemed, with their serene and azure smiles, 

To beckon him. 

He took up, with a new interest, ‘Chartism,’ which alone of 
all Mr. Carlyle’s works he had hitherto disliked, because his 


84 


VOGUE LA GALfiRE. 


own luxurious day-dreams had always flowed in such sad dis- 
cord with the terrible warnings of the modern seer, and his dark 
vistas of starvation, crime, neglect, and discontent. 

‘Well,’ he said to himself, as he closed the book, ‘I suppose 
it is good for us easy-going ones now and then to face the pos- 
sibility of a change. Gold has grown on my back as feathers 
do on geese, without my own will or deed ; but considering 
that gold, like feathers, is equally useful to those who have and 
those who have not, why, it is worth while for the goose to re- 
member that he may possibly one day be plucked. And what 

remains ? ‘ lo,’ as Medea says But Argemone ?’ 

And Lancelot felt, for the moment, as conservative as 

the tutelary genius of all special constables. 

As the last thought passed through his brain, Bracebridge’s 
little mustang slouched past the window, ridden (without 
saddle) by a horseman whom there was no mistaking, for no 
one but the immaculate colonel, the chevalier sans peur et sans 
reproche dared to go about the country ‘such a figure.’ A 
minute afterward he walked in, in a felt student’s hat, a ragged 
heather-colored coatee, and old white ‘ regulation drills,’ shrunk 
half-way up his legs, a pair of embroidered Indian mocassins, 
and an enormous meerschaum at his button-hole. 

‘ Where have you been this last week V 

‘ Over head and ears in Young England, till I fled to you for 
a week’s common-sense. A glass of cider, for mercy’s sake, ‘to 
take the taste of it out of my mouth,’ as Bill Sykes has it.’ 

‘Where have you been staying?’ 

‘ With young Lord Vieuxbois, among high art and painted 
glass, spade farms, and model smell-traps, rubricalities and sani- 
tary reforms, and all other inventions, possible and impossible, 
for ‘ stretching the old formula to meet the new fact’ as your 
favorite prophet says.’ 

‘Till the old formula cracks under the tension.’ 

‘And cracks its devotees, too, I think. Here comes the 
cider 1’ 


VOGUE LA GAL^IRE. 


85 


‘ But my dear fellow, you must not laugh at all this. Yning 
England or Peelite. this is all right and noble. What a yet 
unspoken poetry there is in that very sanitary reform ! It is 
the great fact of the age. We shall have men arise and 
write epics on it, when they have learned that ‘ to the puie all 
things are pure,’ and that science and usefulness contain a 
divine element, even in their lowest appliances.’ 

‘ Write one yourself, and call it the ChadwicTciad^ 

* Why not V 

Smells and the Man I sing. 

There’s a beginning at once. Why don’t you rather with your 
practical power, turn sanitary reformer — the only true soldier — 
and conquer those real devils and ‘ natural enemies’ of English- 
men, carbonic acid and sulphuretted hydrogen V 

‘ Ce n'est pas mon metier^ my dear fellow. I am miserably 
behind the age. People are getting so cursedly in earnest now- 
adays, that I shall have to bolt to the backwoods to amuse 
myself in peace ; or else sham dumb as the monkeys do, lest 
folks should find out that Pm rational, and set me to work.’ 

Lancelot laughed and sighed. 

‘ But how on earth do you contrive to get on so well with 
men with whom you have not an idea in common ?’ 

‘ Savoir faire^ oh infant Hercules ! own daddy to savoir vi- 
vre. I am a good listener ; and, therefore, the most perfect, 
because the most silent of flatterers. When they talk Pugines- 
query, I stick my head on one side attentively, and ‘ think the 
more,’ like the lady’s parrot. I have been all the morning 
looking over a set of drawings for my lord’s new chapel ; and 
every soul in the party fancies me a great antiquary, just be- 
cause I have been retailing to B as my own every thing that A 
told me the moment before.’ 

‘ I envy you your tact, at all events.’ 

‘ Why the deuce should you ? Y'ou may rise in time to 
something better than tact * to what the good book, I suppose, 


86 


VOGUE LA GALilRE. 


means by ‘ wisdom.’ Young geniuses like you, who have been 
green enough to sell your souls to ‘ truth,’ must not meddle 
with tact, unless you wish to fare as the donkey did when he 
tried to play lap-dog.’ 

‘ At all events I w^ould sooner remain cub till they run me 
down and eat me, than give up speaking rny mind,’ said Lan- 
celot. ‘Fool I may be, but the devil himself shan’t make me knave.’ 

‘ Quite proper. On two thousand a-year a man can afford 
to be honest. Kick out lustily right and left ! — After all, the 
world is like a spaniel ; the more you beat it, the better it likes 
you — if you have money. Only don’t kick too hard ; for, after 
all, it has a hundred million pair of shins to your one.’ 

‘Don’t fear that I shall run a-muck against society just now. 
1 am too thoroughly out of my own good books. I have been 
for years laughing at Young England, and yet its little finger 
is thicker than my whole body, for it is trying to do something ; 
and I, alas, am doing utterly nothing. I should be really glad 
to take a lesson of these men and their plans for social improve- 
ment.’ 

‘ You will have a fine opportunity this evening. Don’t you 
dine at Minch amps tead ?’ 

‘ Yes. Do you ?’ 

‘ Mr. Jingle dines everywhere, except at home. Will you 
take me over in your trap ?’ 

‘ Done. But whom shall we meet there ?’ 

‘The Lavingtons, and Vieuxbois, and Vaurien, and a parson 
or two, I suppose. But between Saint Venus and Vieuxbois 
you may soon learn enough to make you a sadder man, if not 
a wiser one.’ 

‘ Why not a wiser one ? Sadder than now I can not be ; or 
less wise, God knows.’ 

The colonel looked at Lancelot with one of those kindly, 
thoughtful smiles, which came over him whenever his better 
child’s heart could bubble up through the thick crust of world- 
liness. 


VOGUE LA. GAL^IRE. 


87 


‘ My young friend, you have been a little too much on the 
stilts heretofore. Take care that, now you are off them, you 
don’t lie down and sleep, instead of walking honestly on your 
legs. Have faith in yourself ; pick these men’s brains, and all 
men’s. You can do it. Say to yourself boldly, as the false 
prophet in India said to the missionary, ‘ I have fire enough in 
my stomach to burn up’ a dozen stucco and filagree reformers 
and ‘ assimilate their ashes’ into the bargain, like one of Liebig’s 
cabbages.’ 

‘ How can I have faith in myself, when I am playing traitor 
to myself every hour in the day ? And yet faith in something 
I must have : in woman, perhaps.’ 

‘ Never 1’ said the colonel, energetically. ‘ In any thing but 
woman ! She must be led, not leader. If you love a woman, 
make her have faith in you. If you lean on her, you will ruin 
yourself, and her as well.’ 

Lancelot shook his head. There was a pause. 

‘ After all, colonel, I think there must be a meaning in those old 
words our mothers used to teach us, about ‘ having faith in God.” 

The colonel shrugged his shoulders. 

‘ Quien sahe ? said the Spanish girl, when they asked her 
who was her child’s father. But here comes my kit on a clod’s 
back, and it is time to dress for dinner.’ 

So to the dinner-party they went. 

Lord Minchampstead was one of the few noblemen Lancelot 
had ever met who had aroused in him a thorough feeling of 
respect. He was always and in all things a strong man. Nat- 
urally keen, ready, business-like, daring, he had carved out his 
own way through life, and opened his oyster — the world, neither 
with sword nor pen, but with steam and cotton. His father 
was Mr. Obadiah Newbroom, of the well-known manufacturing 
firm of Newbroom, Stag, and Payforall. A stanch Dissenter 
himself, he saw with a slight pang his son Thomas turn Church- 
man, as soon as the young man had worked his way up to be 
the real head of the firm. But this was the only sorrow which 


88 


VOGUE LA GALIiRE. 


Thomas Newbroom, now Lord Minchampstead, had ever given 
his father. ‘ I stood behind a loom myself, my boy, when I 
began life ; and you must do with great means what I did with 
little ones. I have made a gentleman of you, you must make 
a nobleman of yourself.’ Those were almost the last words of 
the stern, thrifty, old Puritan craftsman, and his son never for* 
got them. From a mill-owner he grew to coal-owner, ship* 
owner, banker, railway director, money-lender to kings and 
princes ; and, last of all, as the summit of his own and his com- 
peer’s ambition, to land-owner. He had half-a-dozen estates in 
as many different counties. He had added house to house, 
and field to field ; and at last bought Minchampstead Park and 
ten thousand acres, for two thirds its real value, from that en- 
thusiastic sportsman. Lord Peu de Cervelle, whose family had 
come in with the Conqueror, and gone out with George IV. 
So, at least, they always said ; but it was remarkable that theii 
name could never be traced further back than the dissolution of 
the monasteries ; and calumnious Dryasdusts would sometimes 
insolently father their title on James L, and one of his batches 
of bought peerages. But let the dead bury their dead. There 
was now a new lord in Minchampstead; and every country 
Caliban was finding, to his disgust, that he had ‘got a new 
master,’ and must, perforce, ‘ be a new man.’ Oh ! how the 
squires swore, and the farmers chuckled, when the ‘ Parvenu’ 
sold the Minchampstead hounds, and celebrated his 1st of Sep- 
tember by exterminating every hare and pheasant on the estate ! 
How the farmers swore and the laborers chuckled, when he 
took all the cottages into his own hands, and rebuilt them, set 
up a first-rate industrial school, gave every man a pig and a 
garden, and broke up all the commons, ‘ to thin the labor-mar- 
ket.’ Oh, how the laborers swore, and the farmers chuckled, 
when he put up steam-engines on all his farms, refused to give 
away a farthing in alms, and enforced the new Poor-law to the 
very letter. How the country tradesmen swore, when he called 
them ‘ a pack of dilatory jobbers,’ and announced his intention 


VOGUE LA GAL^]RE. 


89 


of employing only London workmen for his improvements. 
Ob ! how they all swore together (behind his back, of course, 
for his dinners were worth eating), and the very ladies said 
naughty words, when the stern political economist proclaimed 
at his own table, that ‘ he had bought Minchampstead for mere- 
ly commercial purposes, as a profitable investment of capital, 
and he would see that, whatever else it did, it should 'payl 

But the new lord heard of all the hard words with a quiet 
self-possessed smile. He had formed his narrow theory of the 
universe, and he was methodically and conscientiously carrying 
it out. True, too often, like poor Keats’ merchant brothers, — 

Half- ignorant, he turned an easy wheel, 

Which set sharp racks at work to pinch and peel. 

But of the harm which he did he was unconscious ; in the goo'a 
which he did he was consistent and indefatigable ; infinitely su- 
perior, with all his defects, to the ignorant, extravagant, do- 
nothing Squire Lavingtons around him. At heart, however 
Mammon-blinded, he was kindly and upright. A man of a 
stately presence ; a broad honest north-country face ; a high 
square forehead, bland and unwrinkled. I sketch him here 
once for all, because I have no part for him after this scene in 
my corps de ballet. 

Lord Minchampstead had many reasons for patronizing Lan 
celot. In the first place, he had a true eye for a strong man 
whenever he met him ; in the next place, Lancelot’s uncle, the 
banker, was a stanch Whig ally of his in the House. ‘ In the 
rotten-borough times, Mr. Smith,’ he once said to Lancelot, ‘ we 
could have made a senator of you at once ; but, for the sake of 
finality, we were forced to relinquish that organ of influence. 
The Tories had abused it, really, a little too far ; and now we 
can only make a commissioner of you, — which, after all, is a 
more useful post, and a more lucrative one.’ But Lancelot had 
not as yet ‘ Galliolized,’ as the Irish schoolmaster used to call it, 
and cared very little to play a political ninth fiddle. 


VOGUE LA galI:re. 


yO 

The first thing Mhich caught his eyes as he entered the 
drawing-room before dinner was Argemone listening in absorbed 
reverence to her favorite vicar; — a stern, prim, close-shaven, dys- 
peptic man, with a meek, cold smile, which might have become 
a cruel one. He watched and watched in vain, hoping to catch 
her eye; but no, — there she stood, and talked, and listened 

‘Ah,’ said Bracebridge, smiling, ‘it is in vain. Smith! When 
did you know a woman leave the Church for one of us poor 
laymen ?’ 

‘ Good heavens !’ said Lancelot, impatiently, ‘ why will they 
make such fools of themselves with clergymen ?’ 

‘ They are quite right. They always like the strong men — 
the fighters and the workers. In Voltaire’s time they all ran 
after the philosophers. In the middle ages, books tell us, they 
worshipped the knights errant. They are always on the win- 
ning side, the cunning little beauties. In the war-time, when 
the soldiers had to play the world’s game, the ladies all caught 
the red-coat fever ; now, in these talking and thinking days 
(and be hanged to them for bores), they have the black-coat 
fever for the same reason. The parsons are the workers now- 
adays, — or, rather, all the world expects them to be so. They 
have the game in their own hands, if they did but know how 
to play it.’ 

Lancelot stood still, sulking over many thoughts. The colo- 
nel lounged across the room toward Lord Vieuxbois, a quiet, 
truly high-bred young man, with a sweet open countenance, and 
an ample forehead, whose size would have vouched great talents, 
had not the promise been contradicted by the weakness of the 
over-delicate mouth and chin. 

‘ Who is that with whom you came into the room, Brace- 
bridge ?’ asked Lord Vieuxbois. ‘ I am sure I know his 
face.’ 

‘ Lancelot Smith, the man who has taken the shooting-box 
at Lower Whitford.’ 

‘ Oh, I remember him well enough at Cambridge ! He was 


VOGUE LA GALIjrE. 


91 


one of a set who tried to look like blackguards, and really suc- 
ceeded tolerably. They used to eschew gloves, and drink 
nothing but beer, and smoke disgusting short pipes ; and when 
we established the Coverley Club in Trinity they set up an op- 
position, and called themselves the Navvies. And they used to 
make piratical expeditions down to Lynn in eight-oars, to attack 
bargemen and fen girls, and shoot ducks, and sleep under turf- 
stacks, and come home when they had drank all the public- 
house taps dry. I remember the man perfectly.’ 

* Navvy or none,’ said the colonel, ‘ he has just the longest 
head and the noblest heart of any man I ever met. If he does 
not distinguish himself before he dies, I know nothing of human 
nature.’ 

‘ Ah, yes, I believe he is clever enough ! — took a good de- 
gree, a better one than I did — but horribly eclectic ; full of mes- 
merism, and German metaphysics, and all that sort of thing. 1 
heard him one night last spring, on which he had been seen, if 
you will believe it, going successively into a Swedenborgian 
chapel, the Garrick’s Head, and one of Elliotson’s magnetic 
soirees. What can you expect after that V 

‘ A great deal,’ said Bracebridge, dryly. ‘ With such a head 
as he carries on his shoulders the man might be another Mira- 
l)eau, if he held the right cards in the right rubber. And he 
really ought to suit you, for he raves about the middle ages, 
and chivaliy, and has edited a book full of old ballads.’ 

‘ Oh, all the eclectics do that sort of thing, and small thanks 
to them. However, I will speak to him after dinner, and see 
what there is in him.’ 

And Lord Vieuxbois turned away, and, alas for Lancelot ! sal 
next to Argemone at dinner. Lancelot, who was cross with 
every body for what was nobody’s fault, revenged himself all 
dinner-time by never speaking a word to his next neighbor, 
Miss Newbroom, who was longing with all her heart to talk 
sentiment to him about the Exhibition ; and when Argemone, 
in the midst of a brilliant word-skirmish with Lord Vieuxbois, 


92 


VOGUE LA GALfiRE. 


stole a glance at him, he chose to fancy that they were both 
talking of him, and looked more cross than ever. 

After the ladies retired, Lancelot, in his sulky way, made up 
his mind that the conversation was going to be ineflably stupid ; 
and set to to dream, sip claret, and count the minutes till he found 
himself in the drawing-room with Argemone. But ho soon 
discovered, as I suppose we all have, that ‘ it never rains but it 
pours,’ and that one can not fall in with a new fact or a new ac- 
quaintance but next day twenty fresh things shall spring up as 
if by magic, throwing unexpected light on one’s new phenome- 
non. Lancelot’s head was full of the condition-of-the-poor 
question, and lo ! every body seemed destined to talk about it. 

‘ Well, Lord Vieuxbois,’ said the host, casually, ‘ my girls 
are raving about your new school. They say it is a perfect an- 
tiquarian gem.’ 

‘ Yes, tolerable, I believe. But Wales has disappointed me 
a little. That vile modernist naturalism is creeping back even 
into our painted glass. I could have wished that the artist’s 
designs for the windows had been a little more Catholic.’ 

‘ How then ?’ asked the host, with a puzzled face. 

‘ Oh, he means,’ said Bracebridge, ‘ that the figures’ wrists, 
and ankles were not sufficiently dislocated, and the patron saint 
did not look quite like a starved rabbit with its neck wrung. 
Some of the faces, I am sorry to say, were positively like good- 
looking men and women.’ 

‘ Oh, I understand,’ said Lord Minchampstead ; ‘ Brace- 
bridge’s tongue is privileged, you know. Lord Vieuxbois, so you 
must not be angry.’ 

‘ I don’t see my way into all this,’ said Squire Lavington 
(which was very likely to be true, considering that he never 
looked for his way). ‘ I don’t see how all these painted win- 
dows, and crosses, and chanting, and the deuce and the Pope 
only know what else, are to make boys any better.’ 

‘ We have it on the highest authority,’ said Vieuxbois, ‘that 
pictures and music are the books of the unlearned. I do not 


VOGUE LA GAL^IRE. 


93 


think that we have any right in the nineteenth century to con- 
test an opinion which the fathers of the Church gave in the 
fourth.’ 

‘ At all events,’ said Lancelot, ‘ it is by pictures and music, 
by art, and song, and symbolic representations, that all nations 
have been educated in their adolescence ; and as the youth of 
the individual is exactly analogous to the youth of the col- 
lective race, we should employ the same means of instruction 
with our children which succeeded in the early ages with the 
whole world.’ 

Lancelot might as well have held his tongue — nobody under- 
stood him but Vieuxbois, and he had been taught to scent Ger- 
man neology in every thing, as some folks are taught to scent 
Jesuitry, especially when it involved an inductive law, and not 
a mere red-tape precedent, and, therefore, could not see that 
Lancelot was arguing for him. 

‘ All very fine. Smith,’ said the squire ; ‘it’s a pity you won’t 
leave oflf puzzling your head with books and stick to fox-hunt- 
ing. All you young gentlemen will do is to turn the heads of 
the poor with your cursed education.’ The national oath fol- 
lowed of course. ‘ Pictures and chanting ! Why, when I was 
a boy, a good honest laboring-rnan wanted to see nothing bet- 
ter than a halfpenny ballad, with a woodcut at the top, and 
they worked very well then and wanted for nothing.’ 

‘ Oh, we shall give them the halfpenny ballads in time !’ said 
Vieuxbois, smiling. 

‘You will do a very good deed, then,’ said mine host. ‘ But 
I am sorry to say that, as far as I can find from my agents, 
when the upper classes write cheap publications the lower 
classes will not read them.’ 

‘ Too true,’ said Vieuxbois. 

‘Is not the cause,’ asked Lancelot, ‘just that the upper 
classes do write them ?’ 

‘The writings of working-men certainly,’ said Lord Min- 
charnpstead, ‘ have an enormous sale among their own class? 


94 


VOGUE LA GALERE. 


‘ J ust because they express the feelings of that class, of which 
I am beginning to fear that we know very little. Look, again, 
what a noble literature of people’s songs and hymns Germany 
has. Some of Lord Vieuxbois’ friends, I know, are busy trans- 
lating many of them.’ 

‘ As many of them, that is to say,’ said Vieuxbois, ‘ as are 
compatible with a real Church spirit.’ 

‘Be it so ; but who wrote them ? Not the German aristoc- 
racy for the people, but the German people for themselves. 
There is the secret of their power. Why not educate the people 
up to such a standard that they should be able to write their 
own literature?’ 

‘ What,’ said Mr. Chalklands, of Chalklands, who sat oppo- 
site, ‘ would you have working-men turn ballad writers ? 
There would be an end of work then, I think.’ 

‘ I have not heard,’ said Lancelot, ‘ that the young women — 
ladies^ I ought to say, if the word mean any thing — who wrote 
the Lowell Offering, spun less or worse cotton than their 
neighbors.’ 

‘ On the contrary,’ said Lord Minchampstead, ‘ we have the 
most noble accounts of heroic industry and self-sacrifice in girls 
whose education, to judge by its fruits, might shame that of 
most English young ladies.’ 

Mr. Chalklands expressed certain confused notions that, in 
America, factory-girls carried green silk parasols, put the legs 
of pianos into trowsers, and were too prudish to make a shirt, 
or call it a ^shirt after it was made, he did not quite remember 
which. 

‘ It is a great pity,’ said Lord Minchampstead, ‘ that our fac- 
tory-girls are not in the same state of civilization. But it is 
socially impossible. America is in an abnormal state. In a 
young country the laws of political economy do not make 
themselves fully felt. Here, where we have no uncleared world 
to drain the labor-market, we may pity and alleviate the condi- 
tion of the working-classes, but we can do nothing more. All 


VOGUE LA galI:re. 


95 


the nioaern schemes for the amelioration which ignore the laws 
of competition, must end either in pauperization,* — (with a 
glance at Lord Vieuxbois), — ‘ or in the destruction of prop- 
erty.’ 

Lancelot said nothing, but thought the more. It did strike 
him at the moment that the few might, possibly, be made for 
the many, and not for the few ; and that property was made 
for man, not man for property. But he contented himself with 
asking, — 

“ You think then, my lord, that, in the present state of so- 
ciety, no dead lift can be given to the condition — in plain 
English, the wages — of working-men, without the destruction 
of property V 

Lord Minchampstead smiled, and parried the question. 

‘There may be other dead-lift ameliorations, my young 
friend, besides a dead-lift of wages.’ 

So Lancelot thought, also ; but Lord Minchampstead would 
have been a little startled could he have seen Lancelot’s notion 
of a dead-lift. Lord Minchampstead was thinking of cheap 
bread and sugar. Do you think that I will tell you of what 
Lancelot was thinking ? 

But here, Vieuxbois spurred in to break a last lance. He 
had been very much. disgusted with the turn the conversation 
was taking, for he considered nothing more heterodox than the 
notion that the poor were to educate themselves. In his 
scheme, of course, the clergy and gentry were to educate the 
poor, who were to take down thankfully as much as it was 
thought proper to give them; and all beyond was ‘self-will’ 
and ‘private judgment,’ the fathers of Dissent and Chartism, 
Trades’-Union strikes and French Kevolutions, et si qua alia. 

‘ And pray, Mr. Smith, may I ask what limit you would put 
to education V 

‘ The capacities of each man,’ said Lancelot. ‘ If man living 
in civilized society has one right which he can demand it is this, 
that the State which exists by his labor, shall enable him to 


96 


VOGUE LA GALERE. 


develop, or, at least not hinder his developing, his whole facul- 
ties to their very utmost, however lofty that may be. While a 
man who might be an author remains a spade-drudge, or a 
journeyman while he has capacities for a master ; while any 
man able to rise in life remains by social circumstances lower 
than he is willing to place himself, that man has a right to com- 
plain of the State’s injustice and neglect.’ 

‘ Really, I do not see,’ said Vieuxbois, ‘ why people should 
wish to rise in life. They had no such self-willed fancy in the 
good old times. The whole notion is a product of these modern 
days’ — 

He would have said more, but he luckily remembered at 
whose table he was sitting. 

‘ I think, honestly,’ said Lancelot, whose blood was up, ‘ that 
we gentlemen all run into the same fallacy. We fancy our- 
selves the fixed and necessary element in society, to which all 
others are to accommodate themselves. ‘ Given the rights of 
the few rich, to find the condition of the many poor.’ It 
seems to me that other postulate is quite as fair : ‘ Given the 
rights of the many poor, to find the condition of the many 
rich.’ ’ 

Lord Minchampstead laughed. 

‘ If you hit us so hard, Mr. Smith, I must really denounce 
you as a Communist. Lord Vieuxbois, shall we join the 
ladies V 

In the drawing-room, poor Lancelot, after rejecting overtures 
of fraternity from several young ladies, set himself steadily 
again against the wall to sulk and watch Argemone. But this 
time she spied in a few minutes his melancholy, moonstruck 
face, swam up to him, and said something kind and common- 
place. She spoke in the simplicity of her heart, but he chose 
to think she was patronizing him — she had not talked common- 
places to the vicar. He tried to say something smart and cut- 
ting — stuttered, broke down, blushed, and shrunk back again 
to the wall, fancying that every eye in the room was on him ; 


VOGUE LA GALERE. 


97 


and for one moment a flash of sheer hatred to Argemone 
swept through him. 

Was Argemone patronizing him ? Of course she was. True, 
she was but three-and-twenty, and he was of the same age ; 
but, spiritually and socially, the girl develops ten years earlier 
than the boy. She was flattered and worshipped by gray- 
headed men, and in her simplicity she thought it a noble self- 
sacrifice to stoop to notice the poor awkward youth. And yet 
if he could have seen the pure moonlight of sisterly pity which 
filled all her heart as she retreated, with something of a blush 
and something of a sigh, and her heart fluttered and fell, would 
he have been content? Not he. It was her love he wanted, 
and not her pity; it was to conquer her, and possess her, 
and inform himself with her image and her with his own ; 
though as yet he did not know it ; though the moment that 
she turned away he cursed himself for selfish vanity, and 
moroseness, and conceit. 

‘ Who am I to demand her all to myself? Her, the glorious, 
the saintly, the unfallen ! Is not a look, a word, infinitely more 
than I deserve ? And yet I pretend to admire tales of chivalry ! 
Old knightly hearts would have fought and wandered for years 
to earn a tithe of the favors which have been bestowed on me 
unasked.’ — 

Peace ! poor Lancelot ! Thy egg is by no means addle ; but 
the chick is breaking the shell in somewhat a cross-grained 
fashion. 


E 


CHAPTEE VII. 


THE DRIVE HOME, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 

Now it was not extraordinary that Squire Lavington had 
‘assimilated’ a couple of bottles of Carbonel’s best port; for, 
however abstemious the new lord himself might be, he felt for 
the habits, and for the vote of an old-fashioned Whig squire. 
Nor was it extraordinary that he fell fast asleep the moment he 
got into the carriage ; nor, again, that his wife and daughters 
were not solicitous about waking him ; nor, on the other hand, 
that the coachman and footman, who were like all the squire’s 
servants, of the good old sort, honest, faithful, boozing, extrava- 
gant, happy-go-lucky souls, who had ‘been about the place these 
forty years,’ were somewhat owlish and unsteady on the box. 
Nor was it extraordinary that there was a heavy storm of light- 
ning, for that happened three times a-week in the chalk-hills 
the summer through ; nor, again, that under these circumstances 
the horses, who were of the squire’s own breeding, and never 
thoroughly broke (nothing was done thoroughly at Whitford) 
went rather wdldly home, and that the carriage swung alarm- 
ingly down the steep hills, and the boughs brushed the windows 
rather too often. But it was extraordinary that Mrs. Lavington 
had cast off her usual primness, and seemed to-night, for the 
first time in her life, in an exuberant good-humor, which she 
evinced by snubbing her usual favorite Honoria, and lavishing 
caresses on Argeraone, whose vagaries she usually regarded 
with a sort of puzzled terror, like a hen who has hatched a 
duckling. 


THE DKiVE HOME, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 


99 


‘ Honoria, take your feet off my dress. Argemone, my child, 
I hope you spent a pleasant evening V 

Argemone answered by some tossy commonplace. 

A pause — and then Mrs. Lavington re-commenced, — 

‘How very pleasing that poor young Lord Vieuxbois is, after 
all !’ 

‘ I thought you disliked him so much.’ 

‘ His opinions, my child ; but we must hope for the best. 
He seems moral, and well inclined, and really desirous of doing 
good in his way ; and so successful in the House, too, I hear.’ 

‘ To me,’ said Argemone, ‘ he seems to want life, originality, 
depth, every thing that makes a great man. He knows noth- 
ing but what he has picked up ready-made from books. After 
all, his opinions are the one redeeming point in him.’ 

‘ Ah, my dear, when it pleases Heaven to open your eyes 
you will see as I do !’ 

Poor Mrs. Lavington ! Unconscious spokeswoman for the 
ninety-nine hundredths of the human race ! What are we all 
doing from morning to night, but setting up our own fancies as 
the measure of all heaven and earth, and saying, each in his 
own dialect. Whig, Radical, or Tory, Papist or Protestant, 
‘ When it pleases Heaven to open your eyes, you will see as 
I do V 

‘It is a great pity,’ went on Mrs. Lavington, meditatively, 
‘ to see a young man so benighted and thrown away. With 
his vast fortune, too, — such a means of good ! Really, we 
ought to have seen a little more of him. I think Mr. O’Blare- 
away’s conversation might be a blessing to him. I think of 
asking him over to stay a week at Whitford, to meet that 
sainted young man.’ 

Now Argemone did not think the Reverend Panurgus 
O’Blareaway, incumbent of Lower VVhitford, at all a sainted 
}oung man, but on the contrary, a very vulgar, slippery Irish- 
man ; and she had, somehow, tired of her late favorite. Lord 
Vieuxbois ; so she answered tossily enough, — 


100 


THE DRIVE HOME, 


‘ Really, mamma, a week of Lord Vieuxbois will be too much. 
We shall be bored to death with the Cambridge Camden So- 
ciety, and ballads for the people.’ 

‘ I think, my dear,’ said Mrs. Lavington (who had, half-un- 
consciously to herself, more reasons than one for bringing the 
young lord to Whitford), ‘ I think, my dear, that his conversa- 
tion, with all its faults, will be a very improving change for 
your father. I hope he’s asleep.’ 

The squire’s nose answered for itself. 

‘Really, what between Mr. Smith and Colonel Bracebridge, 
and their very ineligible friend, Mr. Mellot, whom I should 
never have allowed to enter my house if I had suspected his 
religious views, the place has become a hot-bed of false doctrine 
and heresy. I have been quite frightened when I have heard 
their conversation at dinner, lest the footmen should turn in- 
fidels !’ 

‘ Perhaps, mamma,’ said Honoria, slyly, ‘ Lord Vieuxbois 
might convert them to something quite as bad. How shocking 
if old Giles, the butler, should turn Papist !’ 

‘ Honoria, you are very silly. Lord Vieuxbois at least can 
be trusted. He has no liking for low companions. He is 
above joking with grooms, and taking country walks with game- 
keepers.’ 

It was lucky that it was dark, for Honoria and Argemone 
both blushed crimson. 

‘ Your poor father’s mind has been quite unsettled by all their 
ribaldry. They have kept him so continually amused, that all 
my efforts to bring him to a sense of his awful state have been 
more unavailing than ever.’ 

Poor Mrs. Lavington ! She had married, at eighteen, a man 
far her inferior in intellect ; and had become — as often happens 
in such cases — a prude and a devotee. The squire, who really 
admired and respected her, confined his disgust to sly curse? 
at the Methodists (under which name he used to include every 
species of religious earnestness, from Quakerism to that of 


AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 


101 


Mr. Newman). Mrs. Lavington used at first to dignify these 
disagreeables by the name of persecution, and now she was 
trying to convert the old man by coldness, severity, and long 
curtain-lectures, utterly unintelligible to their victim, because 
couched in the peculiar conventional phraseology of a certain 
school. She forgot, poor earnest soul, that the same form of 
religion which had captivated a disappointed girl of twenty, 
might not be the most attractive one for a jovial old man of 
sixty. 

Argemone, who, a fortnight before, would have chimed in 
with all her mother’s lamentations, now felt a little nettled and 
jealous. She could not bear to hear Lancelot classed with the 
colonel. 

‘ Indeed,’ she said, ‘ if amusement is bad for my father, he is 
not likely to get much of it during Lord Vieuxbois’ stay. But, 
of course, mamma, you will do as you please.’ 

‘Of course I shall, my dear,’ answered the good lady, in a 
tragedy-queen tone. ‘ I shall only take the liberty of adding, 
that it is yery painful for me to find you adding to the anxiety 
which your unfortunate opinions give me, by throwing every 
possible obstacle in the way of my plans for your good.’ 

Argemone burst into proud tears (she often did so after a 
conversation with her mother). ‘ Plans for my good !’ — And 
an unworthy suspicion about her mother crossed her mind, and 
was peremptorily expelled again. What turn the conversation 
would have taken next, I know not, but at that moment Ho- 
noria and her mother uttered a fearful shriek, as their side of 
the carriage jolted half-way up the bank, and stuck still in that 
pleasant position. 

The squire awoke, and the ladies simultaneously clapped 
their hands to their ears, knowing what was coming. He thrust 
his head out of the window, and discharged a broadside of at 
least ten pounds’ worth of oaths (Bow Street valuation) at the 
servants, who were examining the broken wheel, with a side- 
volley or two at Mrs. Lavington for being frightened. He often 


102 


THE DRIVE HOME, 


treated her and Honoria to that style of oratory. At Arge- 
mone he had never sworn but once since she left the nursery, 
and was so frightened at the consequences, that he took care 
never to do it again. 

But there they were fast, with a broken wheel, plunging 
horses, and a drunken coachman. Luckily for them, the col- 
onel and Lancelot were following close behind, and came to 
their assistance. 

The colonel, as usual, solved the problem. 

‘ Your dog-cart will carry four. Smith V 

‘ It will.’ 

‘ Then let the ladies get in, and Mr. Lavington drive them home.’ 

‘ What?’ said .the squire, ‘ with both my hands red-hot with 
the gout ? You must drive three of us, colonel, and one of us 
must walk.’ 

‘ I will walk,’ said Argemone, in her determined way. 

Mrs. Lavington began something about propriety, but was 
stopped with another pound’s worth of oaths by the squire, 
who, however, had tolerably recovered his good-humor, and 
hurried Mrs. Lavington and Honoria, laughingly, into the dog- 
cart, saying — 

* Argernone’s safe enough with Smith ; the servants will lead 
the horses, behind them. It’s only three miles home, and I 
should like to see any one speak to her twice while Smith’s fists 
are in the way.’ 

Lancelot thought so too. 

‘ You can trust yourself to me. Miss Lavington ?’ 

‘ By all means. I shall enjoy the walk, after :’ and she 

stopped. In a moment the dog-cart had rattled off, with a 
parting curse from the squire to the servants, who were unhar- 
nessing the horses. 

Argemone took Lancelot’s arm. The soft touch thrilled 
through and through him ; and Argemone felt, she knew not 
why, a new sensation run through her frame. She shuddered 
—not with pain. 


AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 


103 


* You are cold, Miss Lavington ?’ 

‘ Ob, not in the least.’ Cold ! when every vein was boiling 
so strangely I A soft luscious melancholy crept over her. She 
had always had a terror of darkness ; but now she felt quite 
safe in his strength. The thought of her own unprotected girl- 
hood drew her heart closer to him. She remembered with 
pleasure the stories of his personal prowess, which had once 
made her think him coarse and brutal. For the first time in 
her life she kr.ev/ the delight of dependence — the holy charm 
of weakness. And as they paced on silently together, through 
the black awfal night, while the servants lingered, far out of 
sight, about the horses, she found out how utterly she trusted 
to him. 

‘ Listen !' she said. A nightingale was close to them, pour- 
ing out his whole soul in song. 

‘ Is it not very late in the year for a nightingale V 

‘ He is waiting for his mate. She is rearing a late brood, I 
suppose.’ 

‘ What do you think it is which can stir him up to such an 
ecstasy of joy, and transfigure his whole heart into melody V 

‘ What but love, the fullness of all joy, the evoker of all 
song V 

‘ All song ? — The angels sing in heaven.’ 

‘ So they say : but the angels must love if they sino’.’ 

‘They love God!’ 

‘ And no one else V 

‘Oh, yes: but that is universal, spiritual love ; not earthly 
love — a narrow passion for an individual.’ 

‘ How do we know that they do not learn to love all, by first 
loving one V ' 

‘ Oh, the angelic life is single.’ 

‘ Who told you so, Miss Lavington V 

She quoted the stock text, of course : — ‘ In heaven they 
neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the an- 
gels.’ ’ 


104 


THE DRIVE HOME, 


‘ ‘ As the tree falls, so it lies.’ And God forbid that those 
who have been true lovers on earth should contract new mar 
riages in the next world. Love is eternal. Death may part 
lovers, but not love. And how do we know that these angels, 
as they call them, if they be really persons, may not be united 
in pairs by some marriage bond, infinitely more perfect than 
my we can dream of on earth V 

‘ That is a very wild view, Mr. Smith, and not sanctioned by 
the Church,’ said Argemone, severely. (Curious and significant 
it is, how severe ladies are apt to be whenever they talk of the 
Church.) 

‘In plain historic fact, the early fathers and the middle-«ge 
monks did not sanction it : and are not they the very last per- 
sons to wLom one would go to be taught about marriage? 
Strange, that people should take their notions of love from the 
very men who prided themselves on being bound, by their own 
vows, to know nothing about it !’ 

‘ They were very holy men !’ 

‘ But still men, as I take it. And do you not see that Love 
is, like all spiritual things, only to be understood by experience 
— by loving ?’ 

‘ But is love spiritual ?’ 

‘ Pardon me, but what a question for’ one who believes that 
‘ God is love !’ ’ 

‘ But the divines tell us that the love of human beings is 
earthly.’ 

‘ How did they know ? They had never tried. Oh, Miss 
Lavington ! can not you see that in those barbarous and profli- 
gate ages of the later empire, it was impossible for men to dis- 
cern the spiritual beauty of marriage, degraded as it had been 
by heathen brutality ? Do you not see that there must have 
been a continual tendency in the minds of a celibate clergy to 
look with contempt, almost with spite, on pleasures which were 
forbidden to them ?’ 

Another pause. 


AND WHAT CAME OF IT. 


105 


‘ It must be very delicious,’ said Argemone, thoughtfully, ‘ foi 
any one who believes it, to think that marriage can last through 
eternity. But then what becomes of entire love to God ? How 
can we part our hearts between him and his creatures ?’ 

‘ It is a sin, then, to love your sister ? or your friend ? What 
a low, material view of love, to fancy that you can cut it up into 
-to many pieces, like a cake, and give to one person one tit-bit, 
and another to another, as the Popish books would have you 
believe ! Love is like flame — light as many fresh flames at it 
as you will, it grows, instead of diminishing, by the dispersion.’ 

‘ It is a beautiful imagination.’ 

‘ But, oh, how miserable and tantalizing a thought. Miss Lav 
ington, to those who know that a priceless spirit is near them, 
which might be one with theirs through all eternity, like twin 
stars in one common atmosphere, forever giving and receiving 
wisdom and might, beauty and bliss, and yet are barred from 
their bliss by some invisible adamantine wall, against which 
they must beat themselves to death, like butterflies against the 
window-pane, gazing, and longing, and unable to guess why 
they are forbidden to enjoy 1’ 

Why did Argemone withdraw her arm from his ? lie knew, 
and he felt that she was intrusted to him. He turned away 
from the subject. 

‘ I wonder whether they are safe home by this time ?’ 

‘ I hope my father will not catch cold. How sad, Mr. Smith, 
that he will swear so. I do not like to say it ; and yet you 
must have heard him too often yourself.’ 

‘ It is hardly a sin with him now, I think. He has become 
so habituated to it, that he attaches no meaning or notion what- 
soever to his own oaths. I have heard him do it with a smiling 
face to the very beggar to whom he was giving half-a-crown. 
We must not judge a man of his school by the standard of our 
own day.’ 

‘ Let us hope so,’ said Argemone sadly. 

There was another pause. At a turn of the hill-road tho 

E* 


106 


THE DRIVE HOME. 


black masses of beech-wood opened, and showed the priory 
lights twinkling right below. Strange, that Argemone felt sor- 
ry to find herself so near home. 

‘ We shall go to town next week,’ said she ; ‘ and then 

You are going to Norway this summer, are you not?’ 

‘ No, I have learned that my duty lies nearer home.’ 

‘ What are you going to do ?’ 

‘ I wish this summer, for the first time in my life, to try and 
do some good — to examine a little into the real* condition of 
English working-men.’ 

‘ I am afraid, Mr. Smith, that I did not teach you that duty.’ 

‘ Oh, you have taught me priceless things ! You have 
taught me beauty is the sacrament of heaven, and love its 
gate ; that that which is the most luscious is also the most 
pure.’ 

‘ But I never spoke a word to you on such subjects.’ 

‘ There are those. Miss Lavington, to whom a human face 
can speak truths too deep for books.’ 

Argemone was silent ; but she understood him. Why did 
she not withdraw her arm a second time ? 

In a moment more the colonel hailed them from the dog- 
cart, and behind him came the britschka with a relay of ser- 
vants. 

They parted with a long, lingering pressure of the hand, 
which haunted her young palm all night in dreams. Arge- 
mone got into the carriage, Lancelot jumped into the dog-cart, 
took the reins, and relieved his heart by galloping Sandy up 
the hill, and frightening the returning coachman down one bank 
and his led horses up the other. 

‘ Vogue la GaUre^ Lancelot ! I hope you have made good 
use of your time ?’ 

But Lancelot spoke no word all the way home, and wan- 
dered till dawn in the woods around his cottage, kissing the 
hand which Argemone’s palm had pressed. 


CHAPTEE VIIL 


VYIIITHER ? 

Some three months slipped away — right dreary months for 
Lancelot, for the Lavingtons went to Baden-Baden for the sum- 
mer. ‘ The w'aters were necessary for their health.’ .... How 
wonderful it is, by-the-by, that those German Brunnen are 
never necessary for poor people’s health ! . . . . and they did 
not return till the end of August. So Lancelot buried himself 
up to the eyes in the Condition-of-the-Poor question — that is, 
in blue books, red books, sanitary reports, mine reports, factory 
reports ; and came to the conclusion, which is now pretty gen- 
erally entertained, that something was the matter, — but what, 
no man knew, or, if they knew, thought proper to declare. 
Hopeless and bewildered, he left the books, and wandered day 
after day from farm to hamlet, and from field to tramper’s tent, 
in hopes of finding out the secret for himself. What he saw, 
of course, I must not say ; for if I did the reviewers would de- 
clare, as usual, one and all, that 1 copied out of the Morning 
Chronicle ; and the fact that these pages, ninety-nine hundredths 
of them at least, were written two. years before the Morning 
Chronicle began its invaluable investigations, would be con- 
temptuously put aside as at once impossible and arrogant. I 
shall therefore only say, that he saw what every one else has 
seen, at least heard of, and got tired of hearing — though, alas ! 
they have not got tired of seeing it ; and so proceed with my 
story, only mentioning therein certain particulars which folks 
seem, to me, somewhat strangely, to have generally overlooked. 


108 


WHITHER ? 


But whatever Lancelot saw, or thought he saw, I can not 
say that it brought him any nearer to a solution of the ques- 
tion ; and he at last ended by a sulky acquiescence in Sam 
Weller’s memorable dictum : ‘ Who it is I can’t say ; but all I 
can say is, that somebody ought to be wopped for this !’ 

But one day turning over, as hopelessly as he was beginning 
to turn over every thing else, a new work of Mr. Carlyle’s, ho 
fell on some such words as these : — 

‘ The beginning and the end of what is the mattter with us 
in these days is — that we have forgotten God^ 

Forgotten God ? That was at least a defect of which blue 
books had taken no note. And it was one which, on the whole 
— granting, for the sake of argument, any real, living, or prac- 
tical existence to That Being, might be a radical one, — ^it 
brought him manv hours of thought, that saying ; and when 
they were over, ne rose up and went to find — Tregarva. 

‘ Yes, he is the man. He is the only man with whom I 
have ever met, of whom I could be sure, that independent of 
his own interest, without the allurements of respectability and 
decency, of habit and custom, he believes in God. And he, 
too, is a poor man ; he has known the struggles, temptations, 
sorrows of the poor. I will go to him.’ 

But as Lancelot rose to find him, there was put into his 
hand a letter, which kept him at home a while longer — none 
other, in fact, than the long-expected answer from Luke. 

‘ Well, my dear Cousin, — You may possibly have some 
logical ground from which to deny Popery , if you deny all 
other religions with it ; but how those who hold any received 
form of Christianity whatsoever can fairly side with you against 
Rome, I can not see. I am sure I have been sent to Rome by 
them, not drawn thither by Jesuits. Not merely by their de- 
fects and inconsistencies ; not merely because they go on taunt- 
ing us, and shrieking at us, with the cry that we ought to go to 
Rome, till we at last, wearied out, take them at their word, and 


WHITHER ? 


109 


do at their bidding the thing we used to shrink from with terror 
— not this merely — but the very doctrines we hold in common 
with them, have sent me to Rome. For would these men have 
known of them, if Rome had not been ? The Trinity — the 
Atonement — The Inspiration of Scripture — A future state — 
that point on which the present generation, without a smatter- 
ing of psychological science, without even the old belief in ap 
paritions, dogmatizes so narrowly and arrogantly — what would 
they have known of them but for Rome ? And she says there 
are three realms in the future state .... heaven, hell, and 
purgatory .... What right have we to throw away the lat- 
ter, and arbitrarily retain the two former? I am told that 

Scripture gives no warrant for a third state. She says that it 

does — that it teaches that implicitly, as it teaches the other, the 
very highest doctrines ; — some hold, the Trinity itself. .... It 
may be proved from Scripture ; for it may be proved from the 
love and justice of God, revealed in Scripture. The Protestants 
divide — in theory, that is — mankind into two classes, the right 
eous, who are destined to infinite bliss ; the wicked, who are 
doomed to infinite torment ; in which latter class, to make their 
arbitrary division exhaustive, they put of course nine hundred 
and ninety-nine out of the thousand, and doom to everlasting 
companionship with Borgias and Cagliostros, the gentle frivo- 
lous girl, or the peevish boy, who would have shrunk, in life, 
with horror from the contact. . . . Well, at least their hell is 
hellish enough . . . . if it were but just. . . . But I, Lancelot, 
I can not believe it ! I will not believe it ! I had a brother 
once — affectionate, simple, generous, full of noble aspirations — 
but without, alas ! a thought of God ; yielding in a hundred 
little points, and some great ones too, to the infernal tempta- 
tions of a public school. . . . He died at seventeen. — Where is 
he now ? Lancelot ! where is he now ? Never for a day has 
that thought left my mind for years. Not in heaven — for h^ 
has no right there; Protestants would say that as well as 1. . . 
Where then ? — Lancelot ! not in that other place. I can not, 


no 


WHITHER ? 


I will not believe it. For the sake of God’s honor, as well as 
of my own sanity, I will not believe it ! There must be some 
third place — some intermediate chance, some door of hope — ■ 

some purifying and redeeming process beyond the grave 

Why not a purifying fire ? Ages of that are surely pun- 
ishment enough — and if there be a fire of hell, why not a fire 
of purgatory ? . . . . After all, the idea of purgatory as a fire 
is only an opinion, not a dogma of the church. .... But if 
the gross flesh which has sinned is to be punished by the mat- 
ter which it has abused, why may it not be purified by it ? 

You may laugh, if you will, at both, and say again, as I have 
heard you say, ere now, that the popular Christian paradise and 
hell, are but a Pagan Olympus and Tartarus, as grossly mate- 
rial as Mohammed’s, without the honest, thorough-going sexuali- 
ty, which you thought made his notion logical and consistent. 
. . . Well, you may say that, but Protestants cannot ; for their 
idea of heaven, and ours, is the same — with this exception, that 
theirs will contain but a thin band of saved ones, while ours 
will fill and grow to all eternity....! tell you, Lancelot, it is 
just the very doctrines for which England most curses Rome, 
and this very purgatory at the head of them, which constitute 
her strength and her allurement; which appeal to the reason, 
the conscience, the heart of men like me, who have revolted 
from the novel superstition which looks pitilessly on at the fond 
memories of the brother, the prayers of the orphan, the doubled 
desolation of the widow, with its cold, terrible assurance, ‘ There 
is no hope for thy loved and lost ones — no hope, but hell for 
evermore !’ 

‘I do not expect to convert you. * You have your metempsy- 
chosis, and your theories of progressive jncarnation, and your 
monads, and your spirits of thi stars and flowers. I have not 
forgotten a certain talk of ours over Falk Von Miiller’s Recol- 
lections of Goethe, and how you materialists are often the most 

fantastic of theorists I do not expect, I say, to convert you. 

I only want to show you there is no use trying to show the 


WHITHER ? 


Ill 


self-satisfied Pharisees of the popular sect — why, in spite of all 
their curses, men still go back to Rome.’ 

Lancelot read this, and re-read it ; and smiled, but sadly— 
and the more he read, the stronger its arguments seemed to 
him, and he rejoiced thereat. For there is a bad pleasure — 
happy he who has not felt it — in a pitiless reductio ad absur- 
dum, which asks taunt ngly, ‘ Why do you not follow out your 
own conclusions V — instead of thanking God that people do not 
follow them out, and that their hearts are sounder than their 
heads. Was it with this feeling that the fancy took possession 
of him to show the letter to Tregarva ? I hope not — perhaps he 
did not altogether wish to lead him into temptation, any more 
than I wish to lead my readers, but only to make him, just as I 
wish to make them, face manfully, a real awful question, now 
racking the hearts of hundreds, and see how they will be able 
to answer the sophist fiend — for, honestly, such he is — when 
their time comes, as come it will. At least he wanted to test 
at once Tregarva’s knowledge and his logic. As for his ‘ faith,’ 
alas ! he had not so much reverence for it as to care what effect 
Luke’s arguments might have there. ‘ The whole man,’ quoth 
Lancelot to himself, ‘ is a novel phenomenon ; and all phenom- 
ena, however magnificent, are surely fair subjects for experi- 
ment. Majendie may have gone too far, certainly, in dissect- 
ing a live dog — but what harm in my pulling the mane of a 
dead lion ?’ 

So he showed the letter to Tregarva as they were fishing to 
gether one day — for Lancelot had been installed duly in the 
Whitford trout preserves. Tregarva read it slowly; asked, 
shrewdly enough, the meaning of a word or two as he went 
on ; at last folded it up deliberately, and returned it to its own- 
er with a deep sigh. Lancelot said nothing for a few minutes ; 
but the giant seemed so little inclined to open the conversat'on, 
that he was forced at last to ask him what he thought of it. 

‘ It isn’t a matter for thinking, sir, to my mind. There’s a 
nice fish on the feed there, just over-right that alder.’ 


112 


WHITHER ? 


‘ Hang the fish 1 Why not a matter for thinking V 

‘ To my mind, sir, a man may think a deal too much about 
many matters that come in his way.’ 

‘ What should he dc with them then V 

‘ Mind his own business.’ 

‘ Pleasant for those whom they concern ! — That’s rather a 
cold-blooded speech for you, Tregarva.’ 

The Cornishman looked up at him earnestly. His eyes were 
glittering — was it with tears ? 

‘ Don’t fancy I don’t feel for the poor young gentleman — 
God help him I — I’ve been through it all — or not through it, 
that’s to say. I had a brother once, as fine a young fellow as 
ever handled pick, as kind-hearted as a w^oman, and as honest 
as the sun in heaven. — But he would drink, sir ; — -that one 
temptation, he never could stand it. And one day at the 
shaft's mouth, reaching after the kibble-chain — maybe he was 
in liquor, maybe not — the Lord knows ; but 

‘ I didn’t know him again, sir, when we picked him up, any 

more than ’ and the strong man shuddered from head to 

foot, and beat impatiently on the ground with his heavy heel, 
as if to crush down the rising horror. 

‘ Where is he, sir ?’ 

A long pause. 

‘ Do you think I didn’t ask that, sir, for years and years after, 
of God, and my own soul, and heaven and earth — and the 
things under the earth, too ? — For many a night did I go down 
that mine out of my turn, and sat for hours in that level, 
watching and watching, if perhaps the spirit of him might 
haunt about, and tell his poor brother one word of news — one 
way or the other — any thing would have been a comfort — but 
the doubt I couldn’t bear. And yet at last I learnt to bear it — 
and what’s more, I learnt not to care for it. It’s a bold word — 
there’s one who knows whether or not it is a true one.’ 

‘ Good heavens ! — and what then did you say to yourself ?’ 

‘ I said this, sir — or rather, one came as I was on my knees, 


WHITHER ? 


113 


and said it to me — What’s done you can’t mend. What’s left, 
you can. Whatever has happened is God’s concern now, and 
none but His. Do you see that as far as you can, no such 
thing ever happen again, on the face of His earth. And from 
that day, sir, I gave myself up to that one thing, and will until 
I die, to save the poor young fellows like myself, who are left 
nowadays to the Devil, body and soul, just when they are in 
iho prime of their power to work for God.’ 

‘ Ah !’ said Lancelot — ‘ if poor Luke’s spirit were but as strong 
as yours !’ 

‘ I strong V answered he, with a sad smile ; ‘ and so you 
think, sir. But it’s written, and it’s true — The heart knoweth 
its own bitterness.’ 

‘ Then you absolutely refuse to try to fancy your — his pres- 
ent state V 

‘ Yes, sir, because if I did fancy it, that would be a certain 
sign I didn’t know it. If we can’t conceive what God has pre- 
pared for those that we know loved him, how much less can 
we for them of whom we don’t know whether they loved him 
or not ?’ 

‘ Well,’, thought Lancelot to himself, ‘ I did not do so very 
wrong in trusting your intellect to cut through a sophism.’ 

‘ But what do you believe, Tregarva V 

‘ I believe this, sir — and your cousin will believe the same, 
if he will only give up, as I am sore afraid he will need to some 
day, sticking to arguments and doctrines about the Lord, and 
love and trust the Lord himself. 1 believe, sir, that the judge 
of all the earth will do right — and what’s right can’t be wrong, 
nor cruel either, else it would not be like him who loved us to 
the death. That’s all I know ; and that’s enough for me. 
To whom little is given, of him is little required. He ih^ 
didn’t know his master’s will, will be beaten with few stripes, 
and he that did know it, as I do, will be beaten with many, if 
he neglects it — and that latter, not the former, is my concern.’ 

‘Well,’ thought Lancelot to himself, ‘this great heart has 


114 


WHITHER ? 


gone down to the root of the matter — the right and wrong of 
•it. He, at least, has not forgotten God. Well, I would give 
up all the Teleologies and cosmogonies that I ever dreamt or 
read, just to believe what he believes — Heigho and well-a-day ! 
— Paul ! hist 1 I’ll swear that was an otter !’ 

‘ I hope not, sir. I’m sure. I haven’t seen the spraint of one 
here this two years.’ 

‘ There again — don’t you see something move under that 
marl bank ?’ 

Tregarva watched a moment, and then ran up to the spot, 
and throwing himself on bis face on the edge, leant over, grap- 
j)led something — and was instantly, to Lancelot’s astonishment, 
grappled in his turn by a rough lank white dog, whose teeth, 
however, could not get through the velveteen sleeve. 

‘ ril give in, keper ! I’ll give in ! Doant’ye harm the dog ! 
lie’s deaf as a post, you knows.’ 

‘ I won’t harm him if you take him off, and come up quietly.’ 

* This mysterious conversation was carried on with a human 
head, which peeped above the water, its arms supporting from 
beneath the growling cur — such a visage as only worn-out 
poachers, or tramping drovers, or London chiftbniers carry ; 
pear-shaped, and retreating to a narrow peak above, while be- 
low, the. bleared cheeks and drooping lips, and peering purblind 
eyes, perplexed, hopeless, defiant and yet sneaking, bespeak 
their share in the ‘ inheritance of the kingdom of heaven.’ — 
Savages without the resources of a savage — slaves without the 
protection of a master — to whom the cart-whip and the rice- 
swamp would be a change for the better — for there, at least, is 
food and shelter. 

Slowly and distrustfully a dripping scarecrow of rags and 
bones rose from his hiding-place in the water, and then stopped 
suddenly, and seemed inclined to dash through the water ; but 
Tregarva held him fast. 

‘ There’s two on ye ! That’s a shame ! I’ll surrender to nc 
man but you, Paul. Hold off, or I’ll set the dog on ye 


WHITHER ? 


115 


‘It’s a gentleman fishing. He won’t tell — will you, sir?’ 
Ami he turned to Lancelot. ‘Have pity on the poor creature, 
sir, for God’s sake — it isn’t often he gets it.’ 

‘ I won’t tell, my man. I’ve not seen you doing any harm. 
Come out like a man, and let’s have a look at you.’ 

The creature crawled up the bank, and stood, abject and 
shivering, with the dog growling from between his legs. 

‘ I was only looking for a kingfisher’s nest ; indeed now, I 
was, Paul Tregarva.’ 

‘Don’t lie; you w^ere setting night-lines. I saw a minnow 
lie on the bank as I came up. Don’t lie ; I hate liars.’ 

‘ Well indeed, then — a man must live somehow.’ 

‘ You don’t seem to live by this trade, my friend,’ quoth 
Lancelot ; ‘ I can not say it seems a prosperous business, by 
the look of your coat and trowsers.’ 

‘ That Tim Goddard stole all my clothes, and no good may 
they do him ; last time as I weht to jail I gave them him to 
kep, and he went off for a navvy meantimes ; so there I am.’ 

‘ If you will play with the dogs,’ quoth Tregarva, ‘ you know 
what you’ll be bit by. Haven’t I warned you ? Of course you 
won’t prosper: as you make your bed, so you must lie in it. 
'Hie Lord can’t be expected to let those prosper that forget him. 
What mercy would it be to you if He did let you prosper by 
setting snares all church-time, as you were last Sunday, instead 
of going to church ?” 

‘ I say, Paul Tregarva, I’ve told you my mind about that 
afore. If I don’t do what I knows to be right and good al- 
ready, there aint no use in me damning myself all the deeper 
by going to church to hear more.’ 

‘ God help you 1’ quoth poor Paul. 

‘ Now, I say,’ quoth Crawy, with the air of a man who took 
the whole thing as a matter of course, no more to be repined 
at than the rain and wind — ‘what be you a-going to do with 
me this time ? I do hope you won’t have me up to bench. 
’Taint a month now as I’m out o’ prizzum along o’ they fir-top- 


116 


WHITHER ? 


pings, and I should, you see’ with a look up and down and 

round at the gay hay-meadows, and the fleet water, and the 
soft gleaming clouds, which to Lancelot seemed most pathetic, 
— ‘ I should like to ha’ a spell o’ fresh air, like, afore I goes in 
again.’ 

Tregarva stood over him and looked down at him, like some 
Luge stately bloodhound on a trembling mangy cur. ‘ Good 
heavens !’ thought Lancelot, as his eye wandered from the sad 
steadfast dignity of the one, to the dogged, helpless misery of 
the other — ‘can those two be really fellow-citizens? fellow- 
Christians ? — even animals of the same species ? — Hard to be 
lieve !’ 

True, Lancelot ; but to quote you against yourself. Bacon, or 
rather the instinct which taught Bacon, teaches you to discern 
the invisible common law under the deceitful phenomena of 
sense. 

“ I must have those night^ines, Crawy,’ quoth Tregarva, at 
length. 

‘ Then I must starve. You might ever so well take away 
the dog. They’re the life of me.’ 

‘ They’re the death of you. Why don’t you go and work, 
instead of idling about stealing trout ?’ 

‘ Be you a laughing at a poor fellow in his trouble ? Who’d 
gie me a day’s work, I’d like to know ? It’s twenty years too 
late for that!’ 

Lancelot stood listening. Yes, that wretch, too, was a man 
and a brother — at least so books used to say. Time was when 
he had looked on a poacher as a Pariah ‘ hostem humani gen- 
eris’ — and only deplored that the law forbid him to shoot them 
down, like cats and otters ; but he had begun to change his 
mind. 

He had learnt, and learnt rightly, the self-indulgence, the 
danger, the cruelty of indiscriminate alms. It looked well 
enough in theory, on paper. ‘But — but — but,’ thought Lan- 
celot, ‘in practice, one can’t help feeling a little of that urn 


WHITHER? 


117 


economic feeling called pity. No doubt the fellow has com- 
mitted an unpardonable sin in daring to come into the world 
when there was no call for him ; one used to think, certainly, 
that children’s opinions were not consulted on such points before 
they were born, and that, therefore, it might be hard to visit 
the sins of the fathers on the children, even though the labor- 
market were a little overstocked — ‘mais nous avons change tout 
cel a,’ like M. Jourdain’s doctors. No doubt, too, the fellow 
might have got work if he had chosen — in Kamschatka or the 
Cannibal Islands ; for the political economists have proved, bes 
yond a doubt, that there is work somewhere or other for every 
one who chooses to work. But as, unfortunately, society has 
neglected to inform him of the state of the Cannibal Island 
labor-market, or to pay his passage thither when informed 
thereof, he has had to choose in the somewhat limited labor- 
field of the Whitford Priors’ union, whose work-house is already 
every winter filled with abler-bodied men than he, between 

starvation — and this . Well, as for employing him, one 

would have thought that there was a little work waiting to be 
done in those five miles of heather and snipe-bog, which I 
used to tramp over last winter — but those, it seems, are still on 
the ‘ margin of cultivation,’ and not a remunerative investment 
— that is, to capitalists. I wonder if any one had made Crawy 
a present of ten acres of them when he came of age, and com- 
manded him to till that or be hanged, he would not have found 
it a profitable investment to him ? But bygones are bygones, 
and there he is, and the moors, thanks to the rights of property 
—in this case the rights of the dog in the manger — belong to 
poor old Lavington — that is, the game and timber on them ; 
and neither Crawy nor any one else can touch them. What 
can I do for him ? Convert him ? to what ? For the next life, 
even Tregarva’s talisman seems to fail. And for this life — per- 
haps if he had had a few more practical proofs of a divine jus- 
tice and government — that ‘ kingdom of heaven’ of which Luke 
talks, in the sensible bodily matters which he does appreciate, 


118 


WHITHER ? 


he might not be so unwilling to trust to it for the invisible 
hpiritual matters which he does not appreciate. At all events, 
one has but one chance of winning him, and that is, through 
those five senses which he has left. What if he does spend 
the money in gross animal enjoyment ? What will the amount 
of it be, compared with the animal enjoyments which my sta- 
tion allows me daily without reproach ? A little more bacon — 
a little more beer — a little more tobacco ; at all events they 
will be more important to him than a pair of new boots or an 
extra box of cigars to me.’ — And Lancelot put his hand in his 
pocket, and pulled out a sovereign. No doubt he was a great 
goose ; but if you can answer his arguments, reader, I cannot. 

‘ Look here — what are your night-lines worth V 

‘ A matter of seven shilling; aint they now, Paul Tregarva?* 

‘ I should suppose they are.’ 

‘ Then do you give me the lines, one and all, and there’s a sov- 
ereign for you. — No, I can’t trust you with it all at once. I’ll 
give it to Tregarva, and he shall allow you four shillings a-week 
as long as it lasts, if you’ll promise to keep off Squire Laving- 
ton’s river.’ 

It was pathetic, and yet disgusting, to see the abject joy of 
the poor creature. ‘Well,’ thought Lancelot, ‘ if he deserves to 
be wretched, so do I — why, therefore, if we are one as bad as 
the other, should I not make his wretchedness a little less for 
the time being V 

‘I waint come a-near the water. — You trust me. — I minds 
them as is kind to me — ’ and a thought seemed suddenly to 
lighten up his dull intelligence. 

‘ I say, Paul, hark you here. I see that Bantam into D * * 

t’other day.’ 

‘ What ! is he down already ?’ 

‘ With a dog-cart ; he and another of his pals ; and I see ’em 
take out a silk flue, I did. So, says I, you maunt be trying 
that ere along o’ the Whitford trout ; they kepers is out o’ 
nights so sure as the moon.’ 


WHITHER ? 


119 


‘ You didn’t know that. Lying again !’ 

‘ No, but I sayed it in C(.urse. I didn’t want they a-robbing 
here; so I think they wcrked mainly up Squire Vaurien’a 
water.’ 

‘I wish I’d caught them there,’ quoth Tregarva, grimly 
enough ; ‘ though I don’t think they came, or I should have 
seen the track on the banks.’ 

‘ But he sayed like, as how he should be down here again 
about pheasant shooting.’ 

‘Trust him for it. Let us know, now, if you see him.’ 

‘ And that I will too. T wouldn’t save a feather for that ’ere 
old rascal Harry. If the devil don’t have he, I don’t see no 
use in keeping no devil. But I minds them as has marcy on 
me, though my name is Crawy. Ay,’ he added, bitterly, ‘’taint 
so many kind turns as I gets in this life, that I can afford to 
forget e’er a one.’ And he sneaked off, with the deaf dog at 
his heels. 

‘ How did that fellow get his name, Tregarva V 

‘ Oh, most of them have nicknames round here. Some of 
them hardly know their own real names, sir.’ (‘ A sure sign of 
low civilization,’ thought Lancelot.) ‘ But he got his a foolish 
way ; and yet it was the ruin of him. When he was a boy of 
fifteen, he got miching away in church-time, as boys will, and 
took oft’ his clothes to get in somewhere in this very river, gro- 
ping in the banks after craw-fish ; and as the devil — for I can 
think no less — would have it, a big one catches hold of him by 
the fingers with one claw, and a root with the other, and holds 
him there till Squire Lavington comes out to take his walk af- 
ter church, and there he caught the boy, and gave him a thrash- 
ing there and then, naked as he stood. And the story got 
wfind, and all the chaps round called him Crawy ever afterward, 
and the poor fellow got quite reckless from that day, and never 
looked any one in the face again ; and being ashamed of him- 
self, you see, sir, was never ashamed of any thing else — and 
there he is. That dog’s his only friend, and gets a livelihood 


120 


WHITHER ? 


for them both. It’s growing old now ; and when it dies, he’ll 
starve.’ 

‘Well — the world has no right to blame him for not doing 
his duty, till it has done its own by him a little better.’ 

‘ But the world will, sir, because it hates its duty, and cries 
all day long, like Cain, ‘ Am I my brother’s keeper ?’ ’ 

‘ Do you think it knows its duty ? I have found it easy 
enough to see that something is diseased, Tregarva ; but to find 
the medicine first, to administer it afterward, is a very different 
matter.’ 

‘ Well — I suppose the world will never be mended till the 
day of judgment.’ 

‘ In plain English, not mended till it is destroyed. — Hopeful 
for the poor world ! I should fancy, if I believed that, that the 
devil in the old history — which you believe — had had the best 
of it with a vengeance, when he brought sin into the world and 
ruined it. I dare not believe that. How dare you, who say 
that God sent his Son into the world to defeat the devil V 

Tregarva was silent awhile. 

‘ Learning and the Gospel together ought to do something, 
sir, toward mending it. — One would think so — But the proph- 
ecies are against that.’ 

‘As folks happen to read them just now% A hundred years 
hence they may be finding the very opposite meaning in them. 
Come, Tregarva. — Suppose I teach you a little of the learning, 
and you teach me a little of the Gospel — do you think we two 
could mend the world between us, or even mend Whitford 
Priors ?’ 

‘ God knows, sir,’ said Tregarva. 

^ ^ 

‘ Tregarva,’ said Lancelot, as they were landing the next trout, 
where will that Crawy go, when he dies ?’ 

‘ God knows, sir,’ said Tregarva. 

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ * 

Lancelot went thoughtful home, and sat down — not to an- 


WHITHER ? 


121 


svver Luke’s letter — for he knew no answer but Tregarva’s, and 
that, alas ! he could not give, for he did not believe it, but only 
longed to believe it. So he turned off the subject by a ques- 
tion — 

‘You speak of yourself as being already a member of the 
Romish communion. How is this ? Have you given up your 
curacy ? Have you told your father ? I fancy that if you had 
done so, I must have heard of it ere now. I entreat you to tell 
me the state of the case. For, heathen as I am, I am still an 
Englishman ; and there are certain old superstitions still linger- 
ing among us — whencesoever we may have got them first — 
about truth and common honesty — you understand me. 

‘ Do not be angry. But there is a prejudice against the 
truthfulness of Romish priests and Romish converts. It’s no 
affair of mine. I see quite enough Protestant rogues and liars, 
to prevent my having any pleasure in proving Romanists, or 
any other persons, rogues and liars also. But I am — if not 
fond of you — at least sufficiently fond to be anxious for your 
good name. You used to be an open-hearted fellow enough. 
Do prove to the world that coelum, non animum mutant, qui 
trans mare currunt.’ 


P 


CHAPTER IX. 


HAERY VERNEY HEARS HIS LAST SHOT FIRED. 

The day after the Lavingtoiis’ return, when Lancelot walked 
up to the Priory with a fluttering heart to inquire after all par- 
ties, and see one^ he found the squire in a great state of excite- 
ment. 

A large gang of poachers, who had come down from London 
by rail, had been devastating all the covers round, to stock the 
London markets by the first of October, and intended, as Tre- 
garva had discovered, to pay Mr. Lavington’s preserves a visit 
that night. They didn’t care for country justices, not they. 
Weren’t all their fines paid by highly respectable game-dealers 
at the West End ? They owned three dog-carts among them ; 
a parcel by railway would bring them down bail to any amount ; 
they tossed their money away at the public-houses, like gentle- 
men ; thanks to the Game-laws, their profits ran high, and 
when they had swept the county pretty clean of game, why, 
they would just finish off the season by a stray highway rob- 
bery or two, and vanish into Babylon and their native night. 

Such was Harry Verney’s information, as he strutted about 
the court-yard^ waiting for the squire’s orders. 

‘But they’ve put their nose into a furz-bush. Muster Smith, 
they have. We’ve got our posse-commontaturs, fourteen men, 
sir, as ’ll play the whole vale to cricket, and whap them ; and 
every one ’ll fight, for they’re half poachers themselves, you see ’ 
(and Harry winked and chuckled) ; ‘ and they can’t abide no 


HARRY VERNE Y HEARS HIS LAST SHOT FIRED. 123 


interlopei’s to come down and take the sport out of their 
mouths.’ 

‘ But are you sure they’ll come to-night V 

‘That ere Paul says so. Wonder how he found out — some 
of his underhand, colloguing, Methodist ways, I’ll warrant. I 
seed him preaching to that ’ere Crawy, three or four times, 
when he ought to have hauled him up. He consorts with them 
poachers, sir, uncommon. I hope he ben’t one himself, that’s 
all.’ 

‘Nonsense, Harry !’ 

‘ Oh ? Eh ? Don’t say old Harry don’t know nothing, that’s 
all. I’ve fixed his flint, anyhow.’ 

‘ Ah ! Smith !’ shouted the squire, out of his study-window, 
with a cheerful and appropriate oath. ‘ The very man I want- 
ed to see ! You must lead these keepers for me to-night. They 
always fight better with a gentleman among them. Breeding 
tells, you know — breeding tells.’ 

Lancelot felt a strong disgust at the occupation, but he was 
under too many obligations to the squire to refuse. 

‘ Ay, I knew you were game,’ said the old man. ‘ And you’ll 
find it capital fun* I used to think it so, I know, when I was 
young. Many a shindy have I had here in my uncle’s time, 
under the very windows, before the chase was disparked, when 
the fellows used to come down after the deer.’ 

Just then Lancelot turned, and saw Argemone standing close 
to him. He almost sprung toward her — and retreated, for he 
saw that she had overheard the conversation between him and 
her father. 

‘ What ! Mr. Smith !’ said she in a tone in which tenderness 
and contempt, pity and affected carelessness, were strangely 
mingled. ‘ So ! you are going to turn gamekeeper to-night ?’ 

Lancelot was blundering out something, when the squire in- 
terposed. 

‘Let her alone. Smith. Women will be tender-hearted, you 
know. Quite right — but they don’t understand these things 


124 HARRY VERNEY HEARS 

They fight with their tongues, and we with our fists ; and then 
they fancy their weapons don’t hurt — Ha ! ha ! ha 1’ 

‘ Mr. Smith,’ said Argemone, in a low determined voice, ‘ if 
you have promised my father to go on this horrid business —go. 
But promise me^ too, that you will only look on, or I will 
never ’ 

Argemone had not time to finish her sentence before Lance- 
lot had promised seven times over, and meant to keep his prom- 
ise, as we all do. 

About ten o’clock that evening, Lancelot and Tregarva were 
walking stealthily up a ride in one of the home-covers, at the 
head of some fifteen fine young fellows, keepers, grooms, and 
not ex teni'pore ‘ watchers,’ whom old ^ Harry was marshaling 
and tutoring, with exhortations as many and as animated as if 
their ambition was ‘ Mourir pour la patrie^ 

‘ How does this sort of work suit you, Tregarva, for I don’t 
like it at all ? The fighting’s all very well, but it’s a poor 
cause.’ 

‘ Oh, sir, I have no mercy on these Londoners. If it was these 
poor half-starved laborers, that snare the same hares that have 
been eating up their garden-stuff all the week, I can’t touch 

them, sir, and that’s truth ; but these ruffians And yet, sir, 

wouldn’t it be better for the parsons to preach to them, than 
for the keepers to break their heads V 

‘ Oh !’ said Lancelot, ‘ the parsons say all to them that they 
can.’ 

Tregarva shook his head. 

‘ I doubt that, sir. But, there’s a great change for the better 
in the parsons. I remember the time, sir, that there wasn’t an 
earnest clergyman in the vale ; and now, every other man you 
meet is trying to do his best. But those London parsons, sir, 
what’s the matter with them ? For all their societies and their 
schools, the devil seems to keep ahead of them sadly. I 
doubt they haven’t found the right fly yet for publicans and sin- 
ners to rise at.’ 


HIS LAST SHOT FIRED. 


125 


A distant shot in the cover. 

‘ There they are, sir. I thought that Crawy wouldn’t lead 
me false when I let him off.’ 

‘ Well, fight away then and win. I have promised Miss 
Lavington not to lift a hand in the business.’ 

‘ Then you’re a lucky man, sir. But the squire’s game is his 
own, and we must do our duty by our master.’ 

There was a rustle in the bushes, and the tramp of feet on 
the turf. 

‘ There they are, sir, sure enough. The Lord keep us from 
murder this night !’ And Tregarva pulled off his neckcloth, 
and shook his huge limbs, as if to feel that they were all in 
their places, in a way that augured ill for the man who came 
across him. 

They turned the corner of a ride, and, in an instant, found 
themselves face to face with five or six armed men with black- 
ened faces, who, without speaking a word, dashed at them, and 
the fight began ; reinforcements came up on each side, and the 
engagement became general. 

The forest-laws were sharp and stern, 

The forest blood was keen, 

They lashed together for life and death 
Beneath the hollies green. 

The metal good and the walnut- wood 
Did soon in splinters flee; 

They tossed the orts to south and north. 

And grappled knee to knee. 

They wrestled up, they wrestled down. 

They wrestled still and sore ; 

The herbage sweet beneath their feet 
Was stamped to mud and gore. 

And all the wLile the broad still moon stared down on them 
grim and cold, as if with a saturnine sneer at the whole hum- 
bug ; and the silly birds, about whom all this butchery went 


126 


HARRY VERNEY HEARS 


on, slept quietly over their heads, every one with his head 
under his wing. Oh ! if pheasants had but understanding, how 
they would split their sides with chuckling and crowing at the 
follies which civilized Christian men perpetrate for their precious 
sake ! 

Had I the pen of Homer (though they say he never used 
cne), or even that of the worthy who w^asted precious years in 
writing a Homer Burlesqued^ what heroic exploits might I not 
immortalize ! In every stupid serf and cunning ruffian there, 
there was a heart as brave as Ajax’ own ; but then they fought 
with sticks instead of lances, and hammered away on fustian 
jackets instead of brazen shields ; and, therefore, poor fellows, 
they were beneath ‘ the dignity of poetry,’ whatever that may 
mean. If one of your squeamish ‘ dignity of poetry’ critics had 
just had his head among the gun-stocks for five minutes that 
night, he would have found it grim tragic earnest enough ; not 
without a touch of fun though, here and there. 

Lancelot leant against a tree and watched the riot with 
folded arms, mindful of his promise to Argemone, and envied 
Tregarva as he hurled his assailants right and left with immense 
strength, and led the van of battle royally. Little would Arge- 
mone have valued the real proof of love which he was giving 
her as he looked on sulkily, while his fingers tingled with long- 
ing to be up and doing. Strange — that mere lust of fighting, 
common to man and animals, whose traces even the lamb and 
the civilized child evince in their mock-fights, the earliest and 
most natural form of play. Is it, after all, the one human pro- 
pensity which is utterly evil, incapable of being turned to any 
righteous use ? Gross and animal, no doubt it is, but not the 
less really pleasant, as every Irishman and many an Englishman 
knows well enough. A curious instance of this, by-the-by, 
occurred in Paris during the Felruary Revolution. A fat 
English coachman went out, from mere curiosity, to see the 
fighting. As he stood and watched, a new passion crept over 
him ; he grew madder and madder as the bullets whistled past 


HIS LAST SHOT FIRED. 


127 


him ; at last, wlien men began to drop by bis side, he could 
stand it no longer, seized a musket, and rushed in, careless 
which side he took, — 

To drink delight of battle with his peers. 

Uo was not heard of for a day or two, and then they found 
him, stiff and cold, lying on his face across a barricade, with a 
bullet through his heart. Sedentary persons may call him a 
sinful fool. Be it so. Homo sum : humani nihil d me alienum 
puto, 

Lancelot, I verily believe, would have kept his promise, 
though he saw that the keepers gave ground, finding Cockney 
skill too much for their clumsy strength ; but at last Harry 
Verney, who had been fighting as venomously as a wild-cat, 
and liad been once before saved from a broken skull by Tre- 
garva, rolled over at his very feet with a couple of poachers on 
him. 

‘ You won’t see an old man murdered, Mr. Smith V cried he 
imploringly. 

Lancelot tore the ruffians off the old man right and left. 
One of them struck him ; he returned the blow ; and, in an 
instant, promises and Argemone, philosophy and anti-game- 
law prejudices, were swept out of his head, and ‘ he went,’ as 
the old romances say, ‘ hurling into the midst of the press,’ as 
mere a wild animal for the moment as angry bull or boar. 
An instant afterward, though, he burst out laughing, in spite 
of himself, as ‘ The Battersea Bantam,’ who had been ineflfec- 
tually dancing round Tregarva like a game-cock spurring at a 
bull, turned off with a voice of ineffable disgust, — 

‘ That big cove’s a yokel ; ta’nt creditable to waste science 
on him. You’re .my man, if you please, sir,’ — and the little 
wiry lump of courage and conceit, rascality and good-humor, 
flew at Lancelot, who was twice his size, ‘ with a heroism 
worthy of a better cause,’ as respectable papers, when they are 
not too frightened, say of the French. 


128 


HARRY VERNEY HEARS 


* * ^ * * * * 

* Do you want any more ?’ asked Lancelot. 

‘ Quite a pleasure, sir, to meet a scientific gen’lman. Beg 
your pardon, sir ; stay a moment while I wipes my face. Now, 
sir, time, if you please.’ 

Alas, for the little man ; in another moment he tumbled 
over and lay senseless — Lancelot thought he had killed him. 
The gang saw their champion fall, gave ground, and limped 
off, leaving three of their party groaning on the ground, beside 
as many Whitford men. 

As it was in the beginning, so is it to be to the end, my 
foolish brothers ? From the poacher to the prime minister — 
wearying yourselves for very vanity ! The soldier is not the 
only man in England who is fool enough to hire himself to be 
shot at for a shilling a-day. 

But while all the rest were busy picking up the wounded 
men, and securing the prisoners, Harry Verney alone held on, 
and as the poachers retreated slowly up the ride, he followed 
them, peering into the gloom, as if in hopes of recognizing 
some old enemy. 

‘ Stand back, Harry Verney ; we know you, and we’d be 
loth to harm an old man,’ cried a voice out of the darkness. 

‘ Eh Do you think old Harry ’d turn back when he was 
once on the track of ye ? You soft-fisted, gin-drinking, coun- 
ter-skipping Cockney rascals, that fancy you’re to carry the 
county before you, because you get your fines paid by London 
tradesmen ! Eh ? What do you take old Harry for ?’ 

‘ Go back, you old fool !’ and a volley of oaths followed. 
‘ If you follow us, we’ll fire at you, as sure as the moon’s in 
heaven !’ 

‘ Fire away then ! I’ll follow you to !’ and the old man 

paced stealthily but firmly up to them. 

Tregarva saw his danger and sprung forward, but it was too 
late. 

‘ What, will you have it, then V 


HIS LAST SHOT FIRED. 


129 


A sharp crack followed, — a bright flash in the darkness — 
every white birch-stem and jagged oak-leaf shone out for a mo- 
ment as bright as day — and in front of the glare Lancelot saw 
the old man throw his arms wildly upward, fall forward, and 
disappear on the dark ground. 

‘ You’ve done it ! oflf with you !’ And the rascals rushed off 
up the ride. 

In a moment Tregarva was by the old man’s side, and lifted 
him tenderly up. 

‘ They’ve done for me, Paul. Old Harry’s got his gruel. 
He’s heard his last shot fired. I knowed it ’ud come to this, 
and I said it. Eh ? Didn’t I now, Paul V And as the old 
man spoke, the w^orking of his lungs pumped great jets of blood 
out over the still heather-flowers as they slept in the moon- 
shine, and dabbled them with smoking gore. 

‘ Here, men,’ shouted the colonel, ‘ up with him at once, and 
home ! Here, put a brace of your guns together, muzzle and 
lock. Help him to sit on them, Lancelot. There, Harry, put 
your arms round their necks. Tregarva, hold him up behind. 
Now then, men, left legs foremost — keep step — march !’ And 
they moved off toward the Priory. 

‘ You seem to know every thing, colonel,’ said Lancelot. 

The colonel did not answer for a moment. 

‘ Lancelot, I learnt this dodge from the only friend I ever had 
in the world, or ever shall have ; and a week after I marched 
him home to his death-bed in this very way.’ 

‘ Paul — Paul Tregarva,’ whispered old Harry, ‘ put your head 
down here : wipe my mouth, there’s a man ; it’s wet, uncom- 
mon wet.’ It was his own life-blood. ‘I’ve been a beast to 
you, Paul. I’ve hated you, and envied you, and tried to ruin 
you. And now you’ve saved my life once this night ; and here 
you be a-nursing of me as my own son might do, if he was 
here, poor fellow ! I’ve ruined you, Paul ; the Lord forgive me !’ 

‘ Pray ! pray 1’ said Paul, ‘ and He will forgive you. He is 
all mercy. He pardoned the thief on the cross— — ’ 


130 


HARRY VERNEY HEARS 


‘ No, Paul, no thief, — not so bad as that, I hope, anyhow 
never touched a feather of the squire’s. But you dropped ? 
song, Paul, — a bit of writing.’ 

Paul turned pale. 

‘ And — the Lord forgive me ! — I put it in the squire’s fly- 
book.’ 

‘ The Lord forgive you ! Amen !’ said Paul, solemnly. 

Wearily and slowly they stepped on toward the old man’s 
cottage. A messenger had gone on before, and in a few min- 
utes the squire, Mrs. Lavington, and the girls, were round the 
bed of their old retainer. 

They sent off right and left for the doctor and the vicar ; the 
squire was in a frenzy of rage and grief. 

‘ Don’t take on, master, don’t take on,’ said old Harry, as he 
lay ; while the colonel and Honoria in vain endeavored to stanch 
the wound. ‘ I knowed it would be so, sooner or later ; ’tis all 
in the way of business. They haven’-t carried off a bird, squire, 
not a bird ; we was too many for ’em — eh, Paul ? eh V 

‘ Where is that cursed doctor V said the squire. ‘ Save him, 
colonel, save him ; and I’ll give you ’ 

Alas ! the charge of shot at a few feet distance had entered 
like a bullet, tearing a great ragged hole. There was no hope, 
and the colonel knew it ; but he said nothing. 

‘ The second keeper,’ sighed Argemone, ‘ who has been killed 
here ! Oh, Mr. Smith, must this be ? Is God’s blessing on all 
this V 

Lancelot said nothing. The old man lighted up at Arge- 
mone’s voice. 

‘ There’s the beauty, there’s the pride of Whitford! And 
sweet Miss Honor, too, — so kind to nurse a poor old man ! But 
she never would let him teach her to catch perch, would she ? 
She was always too tender-hearted. Ah, squire, when we’re 
dead and gone, — dead and gone, squire, they’ll be the priJe of 
Whitford still ! And they’ll keep up the old place — won’t you, 
my darlings 1 And the old name, too ? For, you know, there 


HIS LAST SHOT FIRED. 


131 


must always be a Lavington in Wbitford Priors, till the Nun- 
pool runs up to Ashy Down.’ 

‘ And a curse upon the Lavingtons,’ sighed Argemone to her- 
self in an under-tone. 

Lancelot heard what she said. 

The vicar entered, but he was too late. The old man’s 
trength was failing, and his mind began to wander. 

‘Windy,’ he murmured to himself, ‘windy, dark and windy 
— birds won’t lie — not old Harry’s fault. .How black it grows ! 
We must be home by nightfall, squire. Where’s that young 
dog gone ? Arter the larks, the brute !’ 

Old squire Lavington sobbed like a child. 

‘ You will soon be home, my man,’ said the vicar. ‘ Re- 
member that you ‘have a Savior in heaven. Cast yourself on 
His mercy.’ 

Harry shook his head. 

‘ Very good words, very kind-7-very heavy game-bag, though. 
Never get home, never any more at all. Where’s my boy Tom 
to carry it ? Send for my boy Tom. He was always a good 
boy till he got along with them poachers.’ 

^ ^ # 

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘listen! There’s bells a-ringing — ringing 
in my head. Come you here, Paul Tregarva.’ 

He pulled Tregarva’s face down to his own, and whispered, — 

‘ Them’s the bells a-ringing for Miss Honor’s wedding.’ 

Paul started and drew back. Harry chuckled and grinned 
for a moment in his old foxy, peering way, and then wandered 
off again. 

‘ What’s that thumping and roaring V Alas ! it was the failing 
pulsation of his own heart. ‘ It’s the weir, the weir — a-washing me 
away — thundering over me — Squire, I’m drowning, — drowning 
and choking ! Oh, Lord, how deep ! Now it’s running quieter 
— now I can breathe again — swift and oily — running on, run- 
ning on, down to the sea. See how the grayling sparkle ! 
There’s a pike ! Taint my fault, squire, so help me Don’t 


N 


132 HARRY YERNEY HEARS HIS LAST SHOT FIRED. ' 

swear, now, squire ; old men and dying maun’t swear, squire. 
IIow steady the river runs down ! Lower and slower — lower 

and slower : now it’s quite still — still still ’ 

His voice sank away — he was dead ! 

No ! once more the light flashed up in the socket. He sprang 
upright in the bed, and held out his withered paw with a kind 
of wild majesty, as he shouted, — 

‘There aint such a head of hares on any manor in the county. 
And them’s the last* words of Harry Verney !’ 

He fell back — shuddered — a rattle in his throat-^ another — 
and all was over. . 







CHAPTEE X. 


‘murder will out, and love too.’ 

Argemone need never have known of Lancelot’s share in the 
poaching affray ; but he dared not conceal any thing from her. 
And so he boldly went up the next day to the Priory, not to 
beg pardon, but to justify himself, and succeeded. And, before 
long, he found himself fairly installed as her pupil, nominally 
in spiritual matters, but really on subjects of which she little 
dreamed. 

Every day he came to read and talk with her, and whatever 
objections Mrs. Lavington expressed were silenced by Argemone. 
She would have it so, and her mother neither dared nor knew 
how to control her. The daughter had utterly out-read and 
out-thought her less-educated parent, who was clinging in hon- 
est bigotry to the old forms, while Argemone wandered forth 
over the chaos of the strange new age, — a poor homeless Noah’s 
dove, seeking rest for the sole of her foot and finding none. 
And now all motherly influence and sympathy had vanished, 
and Mrs. Lavington, in fear and wonder, let her daughter go 
her own way. She could not have done better, perhaps; for 
Providence had found for Argemone a better guide than her 
mother could have done, and her new pupil was rapidly becom- 
ing her teacher. She was matched, for the first time, with a 
man who was her own equal in intellect and knowledge ; and she 
felt how real was that sexual difiference which she had been ac- 
customed to consider as an insolent calumny against woman. 


134 


‘ MURDER WILL OUT,’ 


Proudly and indignantly she struggled against the conviction, 
but in vain. Again and again she argued with him, and was 
vanquished, — or, at least, what is far better, made to see how 
many different sides there are to every question. All appeals 
to authority he answered with a contemptuous smile. ‘ The 
best authorities V he used to say. ‘ On what question do not 
the best authorities flatly contradict each other ? And why ? 
Because every man believes just what it suits him to believe. 
Don’t fancy that men reason themselves into convictions ; the 
prejudices and feelings of their hearts give them some idea, or 
theory, and then they find facts at their leisure to prove their 
theory true. Every man sees facts through narrow spectacles, 
red, or green, or blue, as his notion or his temperament colors 
them : and he is quite right, only he must allow us the liberty 
of having our spectacles too. Authority is only good for pro- 
ving facts. We must draw our own conclusions.’ And Arge- 
mone began to suspect that he was right, — at least to see that 
her opinions were mere hearsays, picked up at her own will and 
fancy ; while his were living, daily-growing ideas. Her mind 
was beside his as the vase of cut dowel’s by the side of the rug- 
ged tree, whose roots are feeding deep in the mother earth. In 
him she first learnt how one great truth received into the depths 
of the soul germinate there, and bears fruit a thousand-fold ; 
explaining, and connecting, and glorifying innumerable things, 
apparently the most unlike and insignificant ; and daily she be- 
came a more reverent listener, and gave herself up, half against 
her will and conscience, to the guidance of a man whom she 
knew to be her inferior in morals and in orthodoxy. She had 
worshiped intellect, and now it had become her tyrant ; and 
she was ready to give up every belief which she once had prized, 
to flutter like a moth round its fasicnating brilliance. 

Who can blame her, poor girl ? For Lancelot’s humility 
was even more irresistible than his eloquence. He assumed 
no superiority. He demanded her assent to truths, not because 
thev were his opinions, but simply for the truth’s sake; and on 


AND LOVE TOO. 


135 


all points which touched the heart he looked up to he/ as in- 
fallible and inspired. In questions of morality, of taste, of 
feeling, he listened not as a lover to his mistress, but rather as 
a baby to its mother ; and thus, half unconsciously to himself, 
he taught her where her true kingdom lay, — that the heart, 
and not the brain, enshrines the priceless pearl of womanhood, 
the oracular jewel, the ‘ Urim and Thummim,’ before which 
gross man can only inquire and adore. 

And, in the mean time, a change was passing upon Lancelot. 
His morbid vanity — that brawl-begotten child of struggling 
self-conceit and self-disgust — was vanishing away ; and as Mr. 
Tennyson says in one of those priceless idyls of his, before which 
the shade of Theocritus must hide his diminished head, — 

He was altered, and began 
To move about the house with joy, 

And with the certain step of man. 

He had, at last, found one person who could appreciate him. 
And in deliberate confidence he set to work to conquer her, 
and make her his own. It was a traitorous return, but a very 
natural one. And she, sweet creature ! walked straight into 
the pleasant snare, utterly blind,«because she fancied that she 
saw clearly. In the pride of her mysticism, she had fancied 
herself above so commonplace a passion as love. It was a cu- 
rious feature of lower humanity, which she might investigate 
and analyze harmlessly as a cold scientific spectator ; and, in 
her mingled pride and purity, she used to indulge Lancelot in 
metaphysical disquisitions about love and beauty, like that first 
one in their walk home from Minchampstead, from which a less 
celestially innocent soul would have shrunk. She thought, for- 
sooth, as the old proverb says, that she could deal in honey 
without putting her hand to her mouth. But Lancelot knew 
better, and marked her for his own. And daily his self-confi- 
dence and sense of rightful power developed, and with them, 
paradoxical as it may seem, the bitterest self-abasement. The 


130 


* MURDER WILL OUT,’ 


contact of her stainless innocence, the growing certainty that 
the destiny of that innocence was irrevocably bound up with 
his own, made him shrink from her whenever he remembered 
his own guilty career. To remember that there were passages 
in it which she must never know — that she would cast him 
from her with abhorrence if she once really understood their 
vileness ! To think that, amid all the closest bonds of love, 
there must forever be an awful, silent gulf in the past, of which 
they must never speak ! — That she would bring to him what 
he could never bring to her ! — The thought was unbearable. 
And as hideous recollections used to rise before him, devilish 
caricatures of his former self, mopping and mowing at him in 
his dreams, he would start from his lonely bed, and pace the 
room for hours, or saddle his horse, and ride all night long aim- 
lessly through the awful woods, vainly trying to escape him- 
self. How gladly, at those moments, he would have welcomed 
centuries of a material hell, to escape from the more awful spirit- 
ual hell within him, — to buy back that pearl of innocence which 
he had cast recklessly to be trampled under the feet of his own 
swinish passions ! But, no : that which was done could never 
be undone, — never, to all eternity. And more than once, as he 
wandered restlessly from one^, room to another, the barrels of 
his pistols seemed to glitter with a cold, devilish smile, and call 
to him, — 

‘ Come to us ! and, with one touch of your finger, send that 
bursting spirit which throbs against your brow to flit forth free, 
and never more to defile her purity by your presence !’ 

But, no, again : a voice within seemed to command him to 
go on, and claim her, and win her, spite of his own vileness. 
And in after-years, slowly, and in fear and trembling, he knew 
it for the voice of God, who had been leading him to become 
worthy of her through that bitter shame of his own unworthi- 
ness, 

As One higher than them would have it, she took a fancy to 
read Homer in the original, and Lancelot could do no less than 


AND LOVE TOO. 


137 


offer his senices as translator. She would prepare for him por- 
tions of the Odyssey, and every day that he came up to the 
Priory he used to comment on t to her ; and so for many a 
week, in the dark-wainscoted library, anc] in the dipt yew- 
alleys of the old gardens, and under the brown autumn trees, 
they quarried together in that unexhausted mine, among the 
records of the rich Titan-youth of man. And step by step 
Lancelot opened to her the everlasting significance of the poem ; 
the unconscious purity which lingers in it, like the last rays of 
the Paradise dawn ; its sense of the dignity of man as man ; 
the religious reverence with which it speaks of all human ties, 
human strength and beauty, ay, even of merely animal human 
appetites, as God-given and Godlike symbols. She could not 
but listen and admire, when he introduced her to the sheer pa* 
ganism of Schiller’s Gods of Greece ; for on this subject he was 
more eloquent than on any. He had gradually, in fact, as we 
have seen, dropped all faith in any thing but Nature ; the 
slightest fact about a bone or a weed was more important to 
him than all the books of divinity which Argemone lent him — 
to be laid by unread. 

‘ What do you believe in V she asked him one day, sadly. 

‘ In this P he said, stamping his foot on the ground. ‘ In 
the earth I stand on, and the things I see walking and growing 
on it. There may be something beside it — what you call a 
spiritual world. But if He who made me intended me to think 
of spirit first. He would have let me see it fii’st. But as he 
has given me material senses, and put me in a material world, 
I take it as a fair hint that I am meant to use those senses 
first, whatever may come after. I may be intended to under- 
stand the unseen world, but if so, it must be, as I suspect, by 
understanding the visible one;' and there are enough wonders 
there to occupy me for some time to come.’ 

‘ But the Bible V (Argemone had given up long ago wast 
ing words about the ‘ Church.’) 

‘ My only Bible as yet is Bacon. I know that he is right, 


138 


‘murder will out,’ 


whoever is wrong. If that Hebrew Bible is to be believed by 
me, it must agree with what I know already from science.’ 

What was to be done with so intractable a heretic ? Call 
him an Infidel and a Materialist, of course, and cast him off 
with horror. But Argemone was beginning to find out that, 
when people are really in earnest, it may be better sometimes 
to leave Grod’s methods of educating them alone, instead of 
calling the poor honest seekers hard names, which the speakers 
themselves don’t understand. 

But words would fail sometimes, and in default of them 
Lancelot had recourse to drawings, and manifested in them a 
talent for thinking in visible forms which put the climax to all 
Argemone’s wonder. A single profile, even a mere mathemat- 
ical figure, would, in his hands, become the illustration of a 
spiritual truth. And, in time, every fresh lesson on the Odys- 
sey was accompanied by its illustration, — some bold and simple 
outline drawing. In Argemone’s eyes, the sketches were im- 
maculate and inspired; for their chief, almost their only fault, 
was just those mere anatomical slips which a woman would 
hardly perceive, provided the forms were generally graceful and 
bold. 

One day his fancy attempted a bolder flight. He brought a 
large pen-and-ink drawing, and laying it silently on the table 
before her, fixed his eyes intensely on her face. The sketch 
was labelled, the ‘ Triumph of Woman.’ In the foreground, to 
the right and left, were scattered groups of men, in the dresses 
and insignia of every period and occupation. The distance 
showed, in a few bold outlines, a dreary desert, broken by al- 
pine ridges, and furrowed here and there by a wandering water- 
course. Long shadows pointed to the half-risen sun, whose disk 
was climbing above the waste horizon. And in front of the 
sun, down the path of the morning beams, came Woman, 
clothed only in the armor of her own loveliness. Her bearing 
was stately and yet modest ; in her face pensive tenderness 
seemed wedded with earnest joy. In her right hand lay a 


AND LOVE TOO. 


139 


cross, the emblem of self-sacrifice. Her patli across the desert 
was marked by the flowers which sprang up beneath her steps ; 
the wild gazelle stepped forward trustingly to lick her hand ; a 
single wandering butterfly fluttered round her head. As the 
group, one by one, caught sight of her, a human tenderness and 
intelligence seemed to light up every face. The scholar dropped 
his l)Ook, the miser his gold, the savage his weapons ; even in 
the visage of the half-slumbering sot some nobler recollection 
seemed wistfully to struggle into life. The artist caught up his 
pencil, the poet his lyre, with eyes that beamed forth sudden 
inspiration. The sage, whose broad brow rose above the group 
like some torrent-furrowed Alp, scathed with all the tempta- 
tions and all the sorrows of his race, watched with a thoughtful 
smile that preacher more mighty than himself. A youth, 
decked out in the most fantastic fopperies of the middle age, 
stood with clasped hands and brimming eyes, as remorse and 
pleasure struggled in his face ; and as he looked, the fierce 
sensual features seemed to melt, and his flesh came again to 
him like the flesh of a little child. The slave forgot his fet 
ters ; little children clapped their hands ; and the toil-worn, 
stunted, savage woman sprung forward to kneel at her feet, 
and see herself transfigured in that new and divine ideal of her 
sex. 

Descriptions of drawings are ugly things at best ; the reader 
must fill up the sketch for himself by the eye of faith. 

Entranced in wonder and pleasure, Argemone let her eyes 
wander over the drawing. And her feelings for Lancelot 
amounted almost to worship, as she apprehended the harmo- 
nious unity of the manifold conception, — the rugged boldness 
of the groups in front, the soft grandeur of the figure which 
was the lodestar of all their emotions, the virginal purity of the 
whole. And when she fancied that she traced in those bland 
aquiline lineaments, and in the crisp ringlets which floated like 
a cloud down to the knees of the figure, some traces of her own 
likeness, a dream of a new destiny flitted before her, — she 


uo 


‘murder will out,’ 


blushed to her very neck ; and as she bent her face over the 
drawing and gazed, her whole soul seemed to rise into her 
eyes, and a single tear dropped upon the paper. She laid her 
hand over it, and then turned hastily away. 

‘ You do not like it ? I have been too bold — ’ said Lance- 
lot, fearfully. 

‘ Oh, no ! no ! It is so beautiful — so full of deep wisdom ! 
But — but You may leave it.’ 

Lancelot slipped silently out of the room, he hardly knew 
why ; and when he was gone, Argemone caught up the draw- 
ing, pressed it to her bosom, covered it with kisses, and hid it, 
as too precious for any eyes but her own, in the furthest corner 
of her secretaire. 

And yet she fancied that she was not in love ! 

The vicar saw the growth of this intimacy with a fast-length- 
ening face ; for it was very evident that Argemone could not 
serve two masters so utterly contradictory as himself and Lance- 
lot, and that either the lover or the father-confessor must 
speedily resign office. The vicar had had great disadvantages, 
by-the-by, in fulfilling the latter function ; for his visits at the 
Priory had been all but forbidden ; and Argemone’s ‘ spiritual 
state’ had been directed by means of a secret correspondence, 
— a method which some clergymen, and some young ladies 
too, have discovered, in the last few years, to be quite consistent 
with moral delicacy and filial obedience. John Bull, like a 
stupid fellow as he is, has still his doubts upon the point ; but 
he should remember, that though St. Paul tells women when 
they want advice to ask their husbands at home, yet if the poor 
woman has no husband, or, as often happens, her husband’s 
advice is unpleasant, to whom is she to go but to the next best 
substitute, her spiritual cicisbeo, or favorite clergyman ? In sad 
earnest, neither husband nor parent deserves pity in the im- 
mense majority of such cases. Woman will have guidance. 
It is her delight and glory to be led ; and if her husband or 
her parents will not meet the cravings of her intellect, she must 


AND LOVE TOO. 


141 


go elsewhere to find a teacher, and run into the wildest ex- 
travag’ances of private judgment, in the very hope of getting 
rid of it, just as poor Argemone had been led to do. 

And, indeed, she had, of late, wandered into very strange 
paths : would to God they were as uncommon as strange ! 
Both she and the vicar had a great wish that she should lead «a 
* devoted life but then they both disdained to use common 
means for their object. The good old English plan of district 
visiting, by which ladies can have mercy on the bodies and 
souls of those below them, without casting off the holy disci- 
pline which a home, even the most ungenial, alone supplies, sa- 
vored too much of mere ‘ Protestantism.’ It might be God’s 
plan for Christianizing England just now, but that was no 
reason, alas ! for its being their plan : they wanted something 
more ‘ Catholic,’ more in accordance with Church principles ; 
(for, indeed, is it not the business of the Church to correct the 
errors of Providence ?) and what they sought they found at once 
in a certain favorite establishment of the vicar’s, a Church-of- 
England heguinage^ or Quasi-Protestant nunnery, which he fos- 
tered in a neighboring city, and went thither on all high tides 
to confess the young ladies, who were in all things nuns, but 
bound by no vows, except, of course, such as they might choose 
to make for themselves in private. 

Here they labored among the lowest haunts of misery and 
sin, piously and self-denyingly enough, sweet souls ! in hope of 
‘ the peculiar crown,’ and a higher place in heaven than the re- 
lations whom they had left behind them ‘ in the world,’ and 
unshackled by the interference of parents, and other such 
merely fleshly relationships, which, as they can not have been 
instituted by God merely to be trampled under foot on the 
path to holiness, and can not well have instituted themselves 
(unless after all, the Materialists are right and this world does 
grind of itself, except when its Maker happens to interfere once 
every thousand years), must needs have been instituted by the 
devil. And so more than one girl in that nunnery, and out cf 


142 


‘murder will out,’ 


it too, believed in her inmost heart, though her ‘Catholic 
principles,’ by a happy inconsistency, forbade her to say so. 

In a moment of excitement, fascinated by the romance of the 
notion, Argemone had proposed to her mother to allow her to 
enter this heguinage^ and called in the vicar as advocate ; which 
produced a correspondence between him and Mrs. Lavington, 
stormy on her side, provokingly calm on his; and when the 
poor lady, tired of raging, had descended to an affecting appeal 
to his human sympathies, entreating him to spare a mother’s 
feelings, he had answered with the same impassive fanaticism, 
that ‘ he was surprised at her putting a mother’s selfish feelings 
in competition with the sanctity of her child,’ and that ‘ had 
his own daughter shown such a desire for a higher vocation, he 
should have esteemed it the very highest honor:’ to which Mrs. 
Lavington answered, naively enough, that ‘ it depended very 
much on what his daughter was like.’*^ — So he was all but for- 
bidden the house. Nevertheless he contrived, by means of this 
same secret correspondence, to keep alive in Argemone’s mind 
the longing to turn nun, and fancied honestly that he was doing 
God service, while he was pampering the poor girl’s lust for sin- 
gularity and self-glorification. 

But, lately, Argemone’s letters had become less frequent and 
less confiding ; and the vicar, who well knew the reason, had 
resolved to bring the matter to a crisis. 

So he wrote earnestly and peremptorily to his pupil, urging 
her, with all his subtile and refined eloquence, to make a final 
appeal to her mother, and if that failed, to act ‘as her con- 
science should direct her ;’ and inclosed an answer from the 
superior of the convent, to a letter which Argemone had in a 
mad moment asked him to write. The superior’s letter spoke 
of Argemone’s joining her as a settled matter, and of her room 
as ready for her, while it lauded to the skies the peaceful activ- 
ity and usefulness of the establishment. This letter troubled Ar- 
gemone exceedingly. She had never before been compelled to face 
her own feelings, either about the nunnery or about Lancelot. 


AND LOVE TOO. 


143 


She had taken up the fancy of becoming a Sister of Charity, 
not as Honoria might have done, from genuine love of the 
poor, but from a ‘ sense of duty.’ Almsgiving and visiting the 
sick was one of the methods of earning heaven prescribed by 
her new creed. She was ashamed of her own laziness by the 
side of Honoria’s simple benevolence ; and, sad though it may 
be to have to say it, she longed to outdo her by some signal 
act of self-sacrifice. She had looked to this nunnery, too, as an 
escape, once and for all, from her own luxury, just as people 
who have not strength to be temperate take refuge in tee-total- 
ism ; and the thought of menial services toward the poor, 
however distasteful to her, came in quite prettily to fill up the 
little ideal of a life of romantic asceticisms and mystic contem- 
plation, which gave the true charm in her eyes to her wild pro- 
ject. But now — just as a field had opened to her cravings 
after poetry and art, wider and richer than she had ever ima- 
gined — just as those simple childlike views of man and nature, 
which she had learned to despise, were assuming an awful 
holiness in her eyes — just as she had found a human soul tc 
whose regeneration she could devote all her energies, — to be 
required to give up all, perhaps forever (and she felt that, if 
at all, it ought to be forever) ; it was too much for her little 
heart to bear ; and she cried bitterly ; and tried to pray, and 
could not ; and longed for a strong and tender bosom on which 
to lay her head, and pour out all her doubts and struggles ; and 
there was none. Her mother did not understand — hardly loved 
her. Honoria loved her ; but understood her even less than 
her mother. Pride — the pride of intellect, the pride of self- 
will, had long since sealed her lips to her own family. . . . 

And then, out of the darkness of her own heart, Lancelot’s 
image rose before her stronger than all, tenderer than all ; and 
as she remembered his magical faculty of anticipating all her 
thoughts, embodying for her all her vague surmises, he seemed 
to beckon her toward him. — She shuddered and turned away. 
And now she first became conscious how he had haunted her 


144 


‘murder will out,’ 


thoughts in the last few months, not as a soul to be saved, but 
as a living man — his face, his figure, his voice, his every gesture 
and expression, rising clear before her, in spite of herself, by 
day and night. 

And then she thought of his last drawing, and the looks 
which had accompanied it, — unmistakable looks of passionate 
and adoring love. There was no denying it — she had always 
known that he loved her ; but she had never dared to confess 
it to herself. But now the earthquake was come, and all the 
secrets of her heart burst upward to the light, and she faced the 
thought in shame and terror. ‘ How unjust I have been to 
him ! how cruel ! thus to entice him on in hopeless love !’ 

She lifted up her eyes, and saw in the mirror opposite, the 
reflection of her own exquisite beauty. 

‘ I could have known what I was doing ! I knew all the 
while ! And yet it is so delicious to feel that any one loves 
me ! Is it selfishness ? It is selfishness, to pamper my vanity 
on an affection which I do not, will not return. I will not be 
thus in debt to him, even for his love. I do not love him — I 
do not ; and even if I did, to give myself up to a man of whom 
I know so little, who is not even a Christian, much less a 
Churchman ! Ay ! and to give up my will to any man ! to 
become the subject, the slave, of another human being ! I, who 
have worshiped the belief in woman’s independence, the hope 
of woman’s enfranchisement, who have felt how glorious it is to 
live like the angels, single, and self-sustained ! What if I cut 
the Gordian knot, and here make, once for all, a vow of perpet- 
ual celibacy V 

She flung herself on her knees — she could not collect her 
thoughts. 

‘ No,’ she said, ‘ I am not prepared for this. It is too solemn 
to be undertaken in this miserable whirlwind of passion. I will 
fast, and meditate, and go up formally to the little chapel, and 
there devote myself to God ; and, in the mean time, to write at 
once to the superior of the Beguines ; to go to my mother, and 


AND LOVE TOO. 


145 


tell her once for all What ! Must I lose him ? Must I 

give him up ? Not his love — I can not give up that — would 
that I could ! but no ! he will love me forever. I know it as 
well as if an angel told me. But to give up Mm ! Never to 
see him ! never to hear his voice ! never to walk with him 
among the beech woods any more ! Oh, Argemone ! Arge- 
mone ! miserable girl ! and is it come to this V And she threw 
herself on the sofa, and hid her face in her hands. 

Yes, Argemone, it is come to this ; and the best thing you 
can do, is just what you are doing — to lie there and cry your- 
self to sleep, while the angels are laughing kindly (if a solemn 
public, who settles every thing for them, will permit them to 
laugh) at the rickety old windmill of sham-Popery which you 
have taken for a real giant. 

At that same day and hour, as it chanced, Lancelot, little 
dreaming what the said windmill was grinding for him, was 
scribbling a hasty and angry answer to a letter of Luke’s, which 
perhaps, came that very morning in order to put him into a, 
proper temper for the demolishing of windmills. It ran thus, — 

‘ Ay, my good Cousin, — So I expected — 

Suane mari niagno turbuntibiis seguora ventis 
Eterra alterius magnum spectare laborem .... 

Pleasant and easy for you Protestants (for I will call you what 
you are, in spite of your own denials, a truly consistent and log- 
ical Protestant — and therefore a materialist) — easy for you, I 
say, to sit on the shore, in cold, cruel self-satisfaction, and tell 
the poor wretch buffeting with the waves what he ought to do, 
while he is choking and drowning. . . .Thank Heaven, the 
storm has stranded me on the everlasting Rock of Peter ; — but 
it has been a sore trouble to reach it. Protestants, who look at 
creeds as things to be changed like coats, whenever they seem 
not to lit them, little know what we Catholic-hearted ones suf- 
fer. . . .If they did, they would be more merciful and more 
chary in the requirements of Us, just as we are in the very throe 
G 


146 


‘ MURDER WILL OUT,’ 


of a new-born existence. The excellent man, to whose care I 
have committed myself, has a wise and a tender heart .... he 
saw no harm in my concealing from my father the spiritual rea- 
son of my giving up my curacy (for I have given it up), and 
only giving the outward, but equally true reason, that I found 
it on the whole an ineligible and distressing post. ... I know 
you will apply to such an act that disgusting monosyllable of 
which Protestants are so fond. He felt with me, and for me — 
for my horror of giving pain to my father, and for my wearied 
and excited state of mind ; and strangely enough — to show how 
differently, according to the difference of the organs, the sarne 
object may appear to two people — he quoted in my favor that 
very verse which you wrest against me. He wished me to 
show my father that I had only changed my heaven, and not 

my character, by becoming an Ultramontane-Catholic 

that as far as his esteem and affection were founded on any 
thing in me, the ground of it did not vanish with my conver- 
sion. If I had told him at once of my altered opinions, he 
would have henceforth viewed every word and action with a 
prejudiced eye. . . . Protestants are so bigoted .... but if, af- 
ter seeing me for a month or two the same Luke that he had 
ever known me, he were gradually informed that I had all the 
while held that creed which he had considered incompatible 
with such a life as I hope mine would be — ^you must see the 
effect which it ought to have. ... I don’t doubt that you will 
complain of all this. . . . All I can say is, that I can not sym- 
pathize with that superstitious reverence for mere verbal truth, 
which is so common among Protestants. . . .It seems to me 
they throw away the spirit of truth, in their idolatry of its let- 
ter. For instance, — what is the use of informing a man of a 
true fact, but to induce a true opinion in him ? But if by cling- 
ing to the exact letter of the fact, you create a false opinion in 
his mind, as I should do in my father’s case, if by telling him 
at once of my change, I gave him an unjust horror of Catholi- 
cism — you do not tell him the truth. . . . You may speak what 


AND LOVE TOO. 


147 


is true to you, — but it becomes an error when received into his 
mind. . . .If his mind is a refracting and polarizing medium, 
if the crystaline lens of his soul’s eye has been changed into 
tourmaline or Labrador spar, the only way to give him a true 
image of the fact, is, to present it to him already properly al- 
tered in form, and adapted to suit the obliquity of his vision ; 
in order that the very refractive power of his hiculties may, in- 
stead of distorting it, correct it, and make it straight for him ; 
and so a verbal wrong, in fact, may possess him with a right 
opinion. . . . 

‘ You see the whole question turns on your Protestant deifi- 
cation of the intellect. ... If you really believed, as you all 
say you do, that the nature of man, and therefore his intellect 
among the rest, was utterly corrupt, you would not be so superT^ 
stitiously careful to tell the truth .... as you call it ; because 
you would know that man’s heart, if not his head, would needs 
turn the truth into a lie by its own corruption. . . . The proper 
use of reasoning is to produce opinion, — and if the subject in 
which you wish to produce the opinion is diseased, you must 
adapt the medicine accordingly.’ 

To all which Lancelot, with several strong curses, scrawled 
the following answer : — 

‘ And this is my cousin Luke ! — Well, I shall believe hence- 
forward that there is, after all, a thousand times greater moral 
gulf fixed between Popery and Tractarianism, than between 
Tractarianism and the extremest Protestantism. My dear fel- 
low, — I won’t bother you by cutting up your charming ambigu- 
ous middle- terms, which make reason and reasoning identical, 
or your theory that the office of reasoning is to induce opinions 
— (the devil take opinions, right or wrong — I want facts, faith 
in real facts !) — or about deifying the intellect — as if all sound 
intellect was not in itself divine light — a revelation to man of 
absolute laws independent of him, as the very heathens hold. 
But this I will do — thank you most sincerely for the compli- 
ment you pay us Cismontane heretics. We do retain some 


148 


‘murder will out,’ 


dim belief in a God — even I am beginning to believe in believ- 
ing in Him. And therefore, as I begin to suppose, it is, that 
we reverence facts, as the work of God, His acted words and 
will, which we dare not falsify; which we believe will tell their 
own story better than we can tell it for them. If our eyes are 
dimmed, we think it safer to clear them, which do belong to us, 
than to bedevil, by the light of those very already dimmed 
eyes, the objects round, which do not belong to us. Whether 
we are consistent or not about the corruptness of man, we are 
about the incorruptness of God ; and therefore about that of 
the facts by which God teaches men ; and believe, and will con- 
tinue to believe, that blackest of all sins, the deepest of all 
Atheisms, that which, above all things, proves no faith in God’s 
government of the universe, no sense of His presence, no under- 
standing of His character, is — a lie. 

‘ One word more — unless you tell your father, within twenty- 
four hours after receiving this letter, I will. And I, being a 
Protestant (if cursing Popery means Protestantism), mean 
what I say.’ 

As Lancelot walked up to the Priory that morning, the Rev- 
erend Panurgus O’Blareaway dashed out of a cottage by the 
roadside, and seized him unceremoniously by the shoulders. 
He was a specimen of humanity which Lancelot could not help 
at once liking and despising ; a quaint mixture of conceit and 
earnestness, uniting the shrewdness of a stock-jobber with the 
frolic of a school-boy broke loose. He was rector of a place in 
the west of Ireland, containing some ten Protestants and some 
thousand Papists. Being, unfortunately for himself, a red-hot 
Orangeman, he had thought fit to quarrel with the priest ; in 
consequence of which he found himself deprived both of tithes 
and congregation, and after receiving three or four Rockite let- 
ters, and a charge of slugs through his hat (of which he always 
talked as if being shot at was the most pleasant and amusing 
feature of Irish life), he repaired to England, and there, after 
trying to set up as popular preacher in London, declaiming at 


AND LOVE TOO. 


149 


Exeter Hall, and writing for all the third-rate magazines, found 
himself incumbent of Lower Whitford. He worked there, as 
he said himself, ‘ like a horse spent his mornings in the 
schools, his afternoons in the cottages ; preached four or five 
extempore sermons every week to overflowing congregations; 
took the lead, by virtue of ‘ the gift of the gab,’ at all ‘ religious’ 
meetings for ten miles round ; and really did a great deal of 
good in his way. He had an unblushing candor about his own 
worldly ambition ; with a tremendous brogue ; and prided him- 
self on exaggerating deliberately both of these excellences. 

‘ The top of the morning to ye, Mr. Smith. Ye haven’t such 
a thing as a cegar about ye ? I’ve been preaching to school- 
children till me throat’s as dry as the slave of a lime-burner’s 
coat.’ 

‘ I am very sorry, but, really, I have left my case at home.’ 

‘Oh! ah! faix, and I forgot. Ye mustn’t be smokin’ the 
nasty things going up to the castle. Och, Mr. Smith, but you’re 
the lucky man 1’ 

‘ I’m much obliged to you for the compliment,’ said Lancelot, 
gruffly ; ‘ but really I don’t see how I deserve it.’ 

‘Deserve it! Sure luck’s all, and that’s your luck, and not 
your deserts at all. To have the handsomest girl in the county 
dying for love of ye’ — (Panurgus had a happy knack of blurt- 
ing out truths — when they were pleasant ones). ‘ And she just 
the beautifulest creature that ever spilte shoe-leather, barring 
Lady Philandria Mountflunkey, of Castle Mountflunkey, Quane’s 
County, that shall be nameless.’ 

‘Upon my word, O’Blareaway, you seem to be better ac- 
quainted with my matters than I am. Don’t you think, on the 
whole, it might be better to mind your own business ?’ 

‘ Me own business ! Poker o’ Moses ! and aint it me own 
buoiness? Haven’t ye spilte my tenderest hopes ? An ct good 
luck to ye in that same, for ye’re as pretty a rider as ever kick- 
ed coping-stones out of a wall ; and poor Paddy loves a sports- 
man by nature. Och ! but ye’ve got a hand of trumps this 


150 ‘murder will out,’ 

time. Didn’t I mate the vicar the other day, and spake my 
mind to him V • 

‘ What do you mean V said Lancelot, with a strong expletive. 

‘ Faix, I told him he might as well Faugh a hallagh — make 
a rid road, and get out of that, with his bowings and his cross- 
ings, and his Popery made asy for small minds, for there was a 
gun a-field that would wipe his eye, — maning yourself, ye 
Prathestant.’ 

‘ All I can say is, that you had really better mind your own 
business, and I’ll mind mine.’ 

‘ Och,’ said the good-natured Irishman, ‘and it’s you must 
mind my business, and I’ll mind yours ; and that’s all fair and 
aqual. Ye’ve cut me out intirely at the Priory, ye Tory, and 
so ye’re bound to give me a lift somehow. Couldn’t ye look 
me out a fine fat widow, with an illigant little fortune ? For 
what’s England made for, except to find poor Paddy a wife and 
money ? Ah, ye may laugh, but I’d buy me a chapel at the 
West-end : me talents are thrown away here intirely, wasting 
me swateness on the desert air, as Tom Moore says (Panurgus 
used to attribute all quotations whatsoever to Irish geniuses), 
and I flatter meself I’m the boy to shute the Gospel to the 
aristocracy.’ 

Launcelot burst into a roar of laughter, and escaped over the 
next gate ; but the Irishman’s coarse hints stuck by him, as they 
were intended to do. ‘ Dying for the love of me !’ He knew 
it was an impudent exaggeration, but, somehow, it gave him 
confidence : ‘ there is no smoke,’ thought he, ‘ without fire.’ 
And his heart beat high with new hopes, for which he laughed 
at himself all the while. It was just the cordial which he 
needed. That conversation determined the history of his life. 

He met Argemone that morning in the library, as usual ; 
but he soon found that she was not thinking of Homer. She was 
moody and abstracted ; and he could not help at last saying, — 

‘I am afraid I and ray classics are de trop this morning, 
Miss Lavington.’ 


AND LOVE TOO. 


151 


* Oh, no, no. Never that.’ She turned away her head. He 
fancied that it was to hide a tear. 

Suddenly she rose, und turned to him with a clear, calm 
gentle gaze. 

‘Listen to me, Mr. Smith. We must part to-day, and for- 
ever. This intimacy has gone on too long — too long, I am 
afraid, for your happiness. And now, like all pleasant things 
in this miserable world, it must cease. I can not tell you why ; 
but you will trust me. I thank you for it — I thank God for it. 
I have learnt things from it which I shall never forget. I have 
learnt, at least, from it, to esteem and honor you. You have 
vast powers. Nothing, nothing, I believe, is too high for you 
to attempt, and succeed. But we must part; and now, God 
be wdth you. Oh, that you would but believe that these glo- 
rious talents are His loan ! That you would but be a true 
and loyal knight to Him who said, — ‘ Learn of me, for I am 
meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls !’ 
— Ay,’ she went on, more and more passionately, for she felt 
that not she, but One mightier than herself was speaking 
through her, ‘ then you might be great indeed. Then I might 
watch your name from afar, rising higher and higher daily in 
the ranks of God’s own heroes. I see it — and you have taught 
me to see it — that you are meant for a faith nobler and deeper 
than all doctrines and systems can give. You must become 
the philosopher, who can discover new truths — the artist, who 

can embody them in new forms, while poor I And that is 

another reason why we should part. — Hush ! hear me out. I 
must not be a clog to drag you down in your course. Take 
this, and farewell ; and remember that you once had a friend 
called Argemone.’ 

She put into his hands a little Bible. He took it, and laid 
it down on the table. 

For a minute he stood silent, and rooted to the spot. Dis- 
appointment, shame, rage, hatred, all boiled up madly within 
him. The bitterest insults rose to his lips, — ‘ Flirt, cold-heart- 


152 


‘murder will out,’ 


ed pedant, fanatic !’ but they sank again unspoken, as he looked 
into the celestial azure of those eyes, calm and pure as a soft 
evening sky. A mighty struggle between good and evil shook 
his heart to the roots ; and, for the first time in his life, his soul 
breathed out one real prayer, that God would help him, now or 
never, to play the man. And in a moment the darkness passed ; 

new spirit called out all the latent strength within him ; and 
gently and proudly he answered her, — 

‘ Yes, I will go. I have had mad dreams, conceited and in- 
solent; and have met with my deserts. Brute and fool as I 
am, I have aspired even to you ! And I have gained in the 
sunshine of your condescension, strength and purity. — Is not 
^that enough for me ? And now, } will show you that I love 
you — by obeying you. You tell me to depart — I go forever.’ 
He turned away. Why did she almost spring after him ? 

‘ Lancelot ! one word ! Do not misunderstand me, as I know 
you will. You will think me so cold, heartless, fickle. — Oh, 
you do not know — you never can know — how much I, too, have 
felt !’ 

He stopped, spell-bound. In an instant his conversation with 
the Irishman flashed up before him with new force and mean- 
ing. A thousand petty incidents, which he had driven con- 
temptuously from his mind, returned as triumphant evidences; 
and, with an impetuous determination, he cried out, — 

‘ I see — I see it all, Argemone ! We love each other ! You 
are mine, never to be parted !’ 

What was her womanhood, that it could stand against the 
energy of his manly will ? The almost coarse simplicity of his 
words silenced her with a delicious violence. She could only 
bury her face in her hands and sob out, — 

' Oh, Lancelot, Lancelot ! whither are you forcing me ?’ 

‘ I am forcing you no-whither. God, the Father of spirits, is 
leading you ! You, who believe in Him, how dare you fight 
against Him ?’ 

‘ Lancelot, I can not — I can not listen to you — read that !’ 


AND LOVE TOO. 


153 


A.iid she handed him the vicar’s letter. He read it. tossed it 
on the carpet, and crushed it with his heel. 

‘ Wretched pedant ! Can your intellect be deluded by such 
barefaced sophistries ? ‘ God’s will,’ forsooth ! And if your 

mother’s opposition is not a sign that God’s will — if it mean 
any thing except your own will, or that — that man’s, — is. 
against this mad project, and not for it, what sign would you 
have? So ‘celibacy is the highest state!’ And why? Be- 
cause ‘ it is the safest and the easiest road to heaven !’ A 
pretty reason. Vicar 1 I should have thought that that was a 
sign of a lower state, and not a higher. Noble spirits show 
their nobleness by daring the most difficult paths. And even 
if marriage was but one weed-field of temptations, as these mis- 
erable pedants say, who have either never tried it, or misused 
it to their own shame, it would be a greater deed to conquer its 
temptations than to flee from them in cowardly longings after 
ease and safety !’ 

She did not answer him, but kept her face buried in her 
hands.* 

‘Again, Isay, Argemone, will you fight against Fate — Prov- 
idence — God — call it what you will ? Who made us meet at 
the chapel ? Who made me, by my accident, a guest in your 
father’s house ? Who put it into your heart to care for my 
poor soul ? Who gave us this strange attraction toward each 
other, in spite of our unlikeness ? Wonderful, that the very 
chain of circumstances which you seem to fancy the offspring 
of chance or the devil, should have first taught me to believe 
that there is a God who guides us! Argemone! speak, tell 
me, if you will, to go forever; but tell me first the truth — You 
love me !’ 

A strong shudder ran through her frame — the ice of artificial 
years cracked, and the clear stream of her woman’s nature 
welled up to the light, as pure as when she first lay on her 
mother’s bosom : she lifted up her eyes, and with one long look 
of passionate tenderness she fiiltered out, — 


154 


‘murder will out’ and love too. 


‘ I love you 1’ 

He did not stir, but watched her with clasped hands, like 
one who in dreams finds himself in some fairy palace, and fears 
that a movement may break the spell. 

‘Now, go,’ she said; ‘go, and let me collect my thoughts. 
All this has been too much for me. Do not look sad — you 
may come again to-morrow.’ 

She smiled, and held out her hand. He caught it, covered 
it with kisses, and pressed it to his heart. She half drew it 
back, frightened. The sensation was new to her. Again the 
delicious feeling of being utterly in his power came over her, 
and she left her hand upon his heart, and blushed as she felt 
its passionate throbbings. 

He turned to go — not as before. She followed with greedy 
eyes her new-found treasure ; and as the door closed behind 
him, she felt as if Lancelot was the whole world, and there was 
nothing beside him, and wondered how a moment had made 
him all in all to her; and then she sunk upon her knees, and 
folded her hands upon her bosom, and her prayers for him 
vere like the prayers of a little child. 


CHAPTER XL 


THUNDEKSTORM THE FIRST. 

But what had become of ‘ the bit of writing,’ which Harry 
Verney, by the instigation of his evil genius, had put into the 
squire’s fly-book? Tregarva had waited in terrible suspense for 
many weeks, expecting the explosion which he knew must fol- 
low its discovery. He had confided to Lancelot the con- 
tents of the paper, and Lancelot had tried many stratagems to 
get possession of it, but all in vain. Tregarva took this as calmly 
as he did every thing else. Only once, on the morning of the 
eclaircissement between Lancelot and Argemone, he talked to 
Lancelot of leaving his place, and going out to seek his for- 
tune ; but some spell, which he did not explain, seemed to chain 
him to the Priory. Lancelot thought it was the want of money, 
and oftered to lend him ten pounds whenever he liked ; but 
Tregarva shook his head. 

‘ You have treated me, sir, as no one else has done — like a 
man and a friend ; but I am not going to make a market of 
your generosity. I will owe no man any thing, save to love 
one another.’ 

‘ But how do you intend to live V asked Lancelot, as they 
stood together in the cloisters. 

‘ There’s enough of me, sir, to make a good navigator if all 
trades fail.’ 

‘ Nonsense ! you must not throw yourself away so.’ 

‘ Oh, sir, there’s good to be done, believe me, among those 


l56 


THUNDER-STORM THE FIRST. 


poor fellows. They wander up and down the land like hogs 
and heathens, and no one tells them that they have a soul to be 
saved. Not one parson in a thousand gives a thought to 
them. They can manage old folks and little children, sir, but, 
somehow, they never can get hold of the young men — -just 
those who want them most. There’s a talk about raffled 

oo 

schools, now. Why don’t they try ragged churches, sir, and a 
ragged service ?’ 

‘ What do you mean V 

‘ Why, sir, the parsons are ready enough to save souls, but 
it must be only according to rule and regulation. Before the 
Gospel can be preached there must be three thousand pounds 
got together for a church, and a thousand for an endowment, 
not to mention the thousand pounds that the clergyman’s edu- 
cation costs : I don’t think of his own keep, sir ; that’s little 
enough, often ; and those that work hardest get least pay, it 
seems to me. But after all that expense, vvhen they’ve built 
the church, it’s the tradesmen, and the gentry, and the old folk 
that fill it, and the working-men never come near it from one 
year’s end to another.’ 

‘ What’s the cause, do you think ?’ asked Lancelot, who had 
himself remarked the same thing more than once. 

‘ Half of the reason, sir, I do believe, is that same Prayer- 
book. Not that the Prayer-book aint a fine book enough, and 
a true one ; but, don’t you see, sir, to understand the virtue of 
it, the poor fellows ought to be already just what you want to 
make them.’ 

‘You mean that they ought to be thorough Christians al- 
ready, to appreciate the spirituality of the liturgy.’ 

‘ You’ve hit it, sir. And see what comes of the present plan ; 
how a navvy drops into a church by accident, and there he has 
to sit like a fish out of water, through that hour’s service, 
staring or sleeping, before he can hear a word that he under- 
stands ; and, sir, when the sermon does come at last, it’s not 
many of them can make much out of those fine book-words 


THUNDER-STORM THE FIRST. 


157 


and long sentences. Why don’t they have a short simple ser* 
vice, now and then, that might catch the ears of the roughs and 
the blowens. without tiring out the poor thoughtless creatures’ 
patience, as they do now ?’ 

‘ Because,’ said Lancelot, — ‘ because — I really don’t know 
why. — But I think there is a simpler plan than even a ragged 
service.’ 

‘ What then, sir V 

‘ Field -preaching. If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, 
lot Mohammed go to the mountain.’ 

‘ Right, sir ; right you are. ‘ Go out into the highways and 
hedges, and compel them to come in.’ And why are they to 
speak to them only one by one ? Why not by the dozen and 
the hundred ? We Wesleyans know, sir, — for the matter of 
that, every soldier knows,— what virtue there is in getting a 
lot of men together ; how good and evil spread like wildfire 
through a crowd ; and one man, if you stir him up, will be- 
come leaven to leaven the whole lump. Oh why, sir, are they 
so afraid of field-preaching? Was not their Master and mine 
the prince of all field-preachers ? Think, if the apostles had 
waited to collect subscriptions for a church before they spoke 
to the poor heathens, where should we have been now ?’ 

Lancelot could not but agree. But at that moment a foot- 
man came up, and, with a face half laughing, half terrified, said, — 

‘ Tregarva, master wants you in the study. And please, sir, 
I think you had better go in too ; master knows you’re here, 
and you might speak a word for good, for he’s raging like a 
mad bull.’ 

‘ I knew it would come at last,’ said Tragarva, quietly, as he 
followed Lancelot into the house. 

It had come at last. The squire was sitting in his study, 
j)urple with rage, while his daughters were trying vainly to pa- 
cify him. All the 'men servants, grooms, and helpers, were 
drawn up in line along the wall, and greeted Tregarva, whom 
they all heartily liked, with sly and sorrowful looks of warning. 


158 


THUNDER-STORM THE FIRST. 


‘ Here, you sir ; you , look at this. Is this the way you 

repay me ? I, who have kept you out of the workhouse, 
treated you like my own child ? And then to go and write 
filthy, rascally. Radical ballads on me and mine ! This comes 
of your Methodism, you canting, sneaking hypocrite ! — you 

viper — you adder — ^you snake — ^you !’ And the squire, 

whose vocabulary was not large, at a loss for another synonym, 
rounded off his oration by a torrent of oaths ; at which Arge- 
mone, taking Honoria’s hand, walked proudly out of the room, 
with one glance at Lancelot of mingled shame and love. ‘ This 
is your handwriting, you villain ! you know it’ (and the squire 
tossed the fatal paper across the table) ; ‘ though I suppose 
you’ll lie about it. How can you depend on fellows who speak 
evil of their betters ^ But all the servants are ready to swear 
it’s your handwriting.’ 

‘ Beg your pardon, sir,’ interposed the old butler, ‘ wo didn’t 
quite say that ; but we’ll all swear it isn’t ours.’ 

‘ The paper is mine,’ said Tregarva. 

‘ Confound your coolness ! He’s no more ashamed of it than 

Read it out. Smith, read it out every word ; and let 

them all hear how this pauper, this ballad-singing vagabond, 
whom I have bred up to insult me, dares to abuse his own 
master.’ 

‘ I have not abused you, sir,’ answered Tregarva. ‘ I will be 
heard, sir !’ he went on in a voice which made the old man 
start from his seat and clench his fist ; but he sat down again. 

‘ Not a word in it is meant for you. You have been a kind 
and a good master to me. Ask where you will if I was ever 
heard to say a word against you. I would have cut off my 
right hand sooner than write about you or yours. But what 
I had to say about others lies there, and I am not ashamed of 
it.’ 

‘Not against me^J Read it out. Smith, and see if every 

word of it don’t hit at me, and at my daughters, too, by , 

worst of all ! Read it out, T say !’ 


THUNDER-STORM THE FIRST. 


159 


Lancelot hesitated ; but the squire, who was utterly beside 
himself, began to swear at him also, as masters of hounds are 
privileged to do ; and Lancelot, to whom the whole scene was 
becoming every moment more and more intensely ludicrous, 
tliought it best to take up the paper and begin : — 

A ROUGH RHYME ON A ROUGH MATTER. 

The merry brown hares came leaping 
Over the crest of the hill, 

Where the clover and corn lay sleeping 
Under the moonlight still. 

Leaping late and early, 

Till under their bite and their tread ^ 

The swedes, and the wheat, and the barley, 

Lay cankered, and trampled and dead. 

A poacher’s widow sat sighing 

On the side of the white chalk bank, 

Where under the gloomy fir-woods 
One spot in the ley throve rank. 

She watched a long tuft of clover. 

Where rabbit or hare never ran ; 

For its black sour haulm covered over 
The blood of a murdered man. 

She thought of the dark plantation. 

And the hares, and her husband’s blood, 

And the voice of her indignation 
Rose up to the throne of God. 

^ I am long past wailing and whining — 

I have wept too much in my life ; 

I’ve had twenty years of pining 
As an English laborer’s wife. 

A laborer in Christian England, 

Where they cant of a Savior’s name, 

And yet waste men’s lives like the vermin’s 
For a few more brace of game. 


160 


THUNDER-STORM THE FIRST. 


There’s blood on your new foreign shrubs, squire ; 

There’s blood on your pointers’ feet ; 

There’s blood on the game you sell, squire, 

And there’s blood on the game you eat ! 

‘You villain !’ interposed the squire, ‘ when did I ever sell a 
h('ad of game V 

You have sold the laboring-man, squire. 

Body and soul to shame. 

To pay for your seat in the House, squire, 

And to pay for the feed of your game. 

You made him a poacher yourself, squire, 

When you’d give neither work, nor meat. 

And your barley-fed hares robbed the garden 
At our starving children’s feet ; 

When packed in one reeking chamber, 

Man, maid, mother, and little ones lay ; 

While the rain pattered in on the rotting bride-bed, 

And the walls let in the day ; 

When we lay in the burning fever 
On the mud of the cold clay floor. 

Till you parted us all for three months, squire. 

At the cursed workhouse-door.^ 

We quarreled like brutes, and who wonders? 

What self-respect could we keep. 

Worse housed than your hacks and your pointers, 

W orse fed than your hogs and your sheep ? 

‘ And yet he has the impudence to say he don’t mean me !’ 
grumbled the old man. Tregarva winced a good deal — as if 
he knew what was coming next ; and then looked up relieved 
when he found Lancelot had omitted a stanza — which I shall 
not omit. 

Our daughters with base-born babies 
Have wandered away in their shame ; 


THUNDER-STORM THE FIRST. 


16J 


If your misses had slept, squire, where they did, 

Your misses might do the same. 

Can your lady patch hearts that are breaking 
With handfuls of coals and rice, 

Or by dealing out flannel and sheeting 
A little below cost price ? 

You may tire of the jail and the workhouse, 

And take to allotments and schools, 

But you’ve run up a debt that will never 
Be repaid us by penny-club rules. 

In the season of shame and sadness, 

In the dark and di eary day, 

When scrofula, gout, and madness. 

Are eating your race away ; 

When to kennels and liveried varlets 
You have cast your daughters’ bread, 

And, worn out with liquor and harlots. 

Your heir at your feet lies dead ; 

When your youngest, the mealy-mouthed rector. 

Lets your soul rot asleep to the grave. 

You will find in your God the protector 
Of the freeman you fancied your slave.’ 

She looked at the tuft of clover. 

And wept till her heart grew light ; 

And at last, when her passion was over 
Went wandering in the night. 

But the merry brown hares came leaping 
Over the uplands still. 

Where the clover and corn lay sleeping 
On the side of the white chalk hill. 

‘Surely, sir,’ said Lancelot, ‘you can not suppose that this 
latoCr part applies to you or your family V 

‘If it don’t, it applies to half the gentlemen in the vale, and 
that’s just as bad. What right has the fellow to speak evil of 


162 


THUNDER-STORM THE FIRST. 


dignities V continued be, quoting the only text in the Bible 
which he was inclined to make a ‘ rule absolute.’ ‘ What does 
such an insolent dog aeserve? What don’t he deserve, I 
say V 

‘ I think,’ quoth Lancelot, ambiguously, ‘ that a man who can 
write such ballads is not fit to be your gamekeeper, and I think 
he feels so himsellV and Lancelot stole an encouraging look at 
Tregarva. 

‘ And I say, sir,’ the keeper answered, with an effort, ‘ that 
T leave Mr. Lavington’s service here on the spot, once and for 
all.’ 

‘ And that you do, my fine fellow !’ roared the squire. ‘ Pay 
the rascal his wages, steward, and then duck him soundly in 
the weir-pool. He had better have stayed there when he fell 
in last.’ 

‘ So I had, indeed, I think. But I’ll take none of yoiir 
money. The day Harry Verney was buried, I vowed that I’d 
touch no more of the wages of blood. I’m going, sir ; I never 
harmed you, or meant a hard word of all this for you, or 
dreamt that you or any living soul would ever see it. But 
what I’ve seen myself, in spite of myself, I’ve set down here, 
and am not ashamed of it. And woe,’ he went on, with an 
almost prophetic solemnity in his tone and gesture, — ‘ woe to 
those who do these things ! and woe to those also who, though 
they dare not do them themselves, yet excuse and defend those 
who dare, just because the world calls them gentlemen, and not 
tyrants and oppressors !’ 

He turned to go. The squire, bursting with passion, sprung 
up with a terrible oath, turned deadly pale, staggered, and 
dropped senseless on the floor. 

They all rushed to lift him up. Tregarva was the first to 
take him in his arms and place him tenderly in his chair, 
where he lay back with glassy eyes, snoring heavily in a fit of 
apoplexy. 

‘ Go ; for God’s sake, go,’ whispered Lancelot to the keeper, 


THUNDER-STORM THE FIRST. 


163 


* and wait for me at Lower Whitford. I must see you before 
you stir.’ 

The keeper slipped away sadly. The ladies rushed in — a 
groom galloped off for the doctor — met him luckily in the vil- 
lage, and, in a few minutes, the squire was bled and put to bed, 
and showed hopeful signs of returning consciousness. And as 
Argemone and Lancelot leant together over his pillow, her hair 
touched her lover’s, and her fragrant breath was warm upon 
his cheek ; and her bright eyes met his and drank light from 
them, like glittering planets gazing at their sun. 

The obnoxious ballad produced the most opposite effects on 
Argemone and on Honoria. Argemone, whose reverence for 
the formalities and the respectabilities of societjq never very 
great, had, of late, utterly vanished before Lancelot’s bad 
counsel, could think of it only as a work of art, and conceived 
the most romantic longing to raise Tregarva into some station 
where his talents might have free play. To Honoria, on the 
other hand, it appeared only as a very fierce, coarse, and im- 
pertinent satire, which had nearly killed her father. True, 
there was not a thought in it which had not at some time or 
other crossed her own mind ; but that made her dislike all the 
more to see those thoughts put into plain English. That very 
intense tenderness and excitability which made her toil herself 
among the poor, and had called out both her admiration of 
Tregarva and her extravagant passion at his danger, made her 
also shrink with disgust from any thing which thrust on her a 
painful reality, which she could not remedy. She was a stanch 
believer, too, in that peculiar creed which allows every one to 
feel for the poor, except themselves, and considers that to plead 
the cause of working-men is, in a gentleman, the perfection of 
virtue, but in a working-man himself, sheer high treason. And 
so beside her father’s sick-bed she thought of the keeper only 
as a scorpion whom she had helped to warm into life ; and 
sighing assent to her mother, when she said, ‘ That wretch ! 
and he seemed so pious and so obliging ! who would have 


164 


THUNDER-STORM THE FIRST. 


dreamt that he was such a radical ?’ she let him vanish from 
her mind and out of Whitford Priors, little knowing the sore 
weight of manly love he bore with him. 

As soon as Lancelot could leave the Priory, he hastened 
home to find Tregarva. The keeper had packed up all his 
small possessions and brought them down to Lower Whitford, 
through which the London coach passed. He was determined 
to go to London and seek his fortune. He talked of turning 
coalheaver, Methodist preacher, any thing that came to hand, 
provided that he could but keep independence and a clear 
conscience. And all the while the man seemed to be strug- 
gling with some great purpose, — to feel that he had a work to 
do, though what it was, and how it was to be done, he did 
not see. 

‘ I am a tall man,’ he said, ‘like Saul the son of Kish ; and 
I am going forth, like him, sir, to find my father’s asses. I 
doubt I shan’t have to look far for some of them.’ 

‘And perhaps,’ said Lancelot, laughing, ‘to find a kingdom.’ 

‘ May be so, sir. I have found one already, by God’s grace, 
and I’m much mistaken if I don’t begin to see my way tow- 
ard another.’ 

‘ And what is that ?’ 

‘ The kingdom of God on earth, sir, as well as in heaven. 
Come it must, sir, and come it will some day.’ 

Lancelot shook his head. 

Tregarva lifted up his eyes and said, — 

‘ Are we not taught to pray for the coming of His kingdom, 
sir ? And do you fancy that He who gave the lesson would 
have set all mankind to pray for what he never meant should 
come to pass V 

Lancelot was silent. The words gained a new and blessed 
meaning in his eyes. 

‘ Well,’ he said, ‘ the time, at least, of their fulfillment is far 
enough off. Union-workhouses and child-murder don’t look 
much like it. Talking of that, Tregarva, what is to become of 


THUNDER-STORM THE FIRST. 


165 


your promise to take me to a village wake, and show me what 
the poor are like V 

‘ I can keep it this night, sir. There is a revel at Bonesake, 
about five miles up the river. Will you go with a discharged 
gamekeeper V 

‘ I will go with Paul Tregarva, whom I honor and esteem as 
one of God’s own noblemen ; who has taught me what a man 
can be, and what I am not,’ — and Lancelot grasped the keeper’s 
hand warmly. Tregarva brushed his hand across his eyes, and 
answered, — 

‘ ‘ I said in my haste. All men are liars ;’ and God has just 
given me the lie back in my own teeth. Well, sir, we will go 
to-night. You are not ashamed of putting on a smock-frock ? 
For if you go as a gentleman, you will hear no more of them 
than a hawk does of a covey of partridges.’ 

So the expedition was agreed on, and Lancelot and the keep- 
er parted until the evening. 

But why had the vicar been rumbling on all that morning 
through pouring rain, on the top of the London coach ? And 
why was he so anxious in his inquiries as to the certainty of 
catching the up-train ? Because he had had considerable expe- 
rience in that wisdom of the serpent, whose combination with 
the innocence of the dove, in somewhat ultramontane propor- 
tions, is recommended by certain late leaders of his school. He 
had made up his mind, after his conversation with the Irish- 
man, that he must either oust Lancelot at once, or submit to be 
ousted by him, and he was now on Ms way to Lancelot’s uncle 
and trustee, the London banker. 

He knew that the banker had some influence with his nephew, 
whose whole property was invested in the bank, and who had 
besides a deep respect for the kindly and upright practical mind 
of the veteran Mammonite. And the vicar knew, too, that he 
himself had some influence with the banker, whose son Luke 
had been his pupil at college. And when the young man lay 
sick of a dangerous illness, brought on by debauchery, into 


ICC 


THUNDER-STORM THE FIRST. 


which weakness rather than vice had tempted him, the vicar 
had watched and prayed by his bed, nursed him as tenderly as 
mother, and so won over his better heart, that he became 
completely reclaimed, and took holy orders with the most earn- 
est intention to play the man therein, as repentant rakes wall 
often do, half from a mere revulsion to asceticism, half from real 
gratitude for their deliverance. This good deed had placed the 
banker in the vicar’s debt, and he loved and reverenced him in 
spite of his dread of ‘ Popish novelties.’ And now the good 
priest was going to open to him just as much of his heart as 
should seem fit ; and by saying a great deal about Lancelot’s 
evil doings, opinions, and companions, and nothing at all about 
the heiress of Whitford, persuade the banker to use all his in- 
fluence in drawing Lancelot up to London, and leaving a clear 
stage for his plans on Argemone. He caught the up-train, he 
arrived safe and sound in town, but what he did there must be 
told in another chapter. 


CHAPTEE XII. 


THUNDER-STORM THE SECOND 

Weary with many thoughts, the vicar came to the door of 
the bank. There were several carriages there, and a crowd of 
people swarming in and out, like bees round a hive-door, enter- 
ing with anxious faces, and returning with cheerful ones, to stop 
and talk earnestly in groups round the door. Every moment 
the mass thickened — there was a run on the bank. 

An old friend accosted him on the steps, — 

‘ What ! have you, too, money here, then V 
‘ Neither here nor anywhere else, thank Heaven !’ said the 
vicar. ‘ But is any thing wrong V 

‘ Have you not heard ? The house has sustained a frightful 
blow this week — railway speculations, so they say — and is hard- 
ly expected to survive the day. So we are all getting our 
money out as fast as possible.’ 

‘ By way of binding up the bruised reed, eh V 
‘ Oh ! every man for himself. A man is under no obligation 
to his banker that I know of.’ And the good man bustled off, 
with his pockets full of gold. 

The vicar entered. All was hurry and anxiety. The clerks 
seemed trying to brazen out their own terror, and shoveled the 
rapidly lessening gold and notes across the counter with an air 
of indignant nonchalance. The vicar asked to see the principal. 

‘If you want your money, sir ’ answered the official, with 

a disdainful look. 


168 


THUNDER-SrORM THE SECOND. 


‘ I want no money. I must see Mr. Smith on private busi- 
ness, and instantly.’ 

‘ He is particularly engaged.’ 

‘ I know it, and, therefore, I must see him. Take in my 
card, and he will not refuse me.’ A new vista had opened itself 
before him. 

. He was ushered into a private room ; and, as he waited for 
the banker, he breathed a prayer. For what ? That his own 
will might be done — a very common style of petition. 

Mr. Smith entered, hurried and troubled. He caught the 
vicar eagerly by the hand, as if glad to see a face which did 
not glare on him with the cold selfish stamp of ‘ business,’ and 
then drew back again, afraid to commit himself by any sign of 
emotion. 

The vicar had settled his plan of attack, and determined bold- 
ly to show his knowledge of the banker’s distress. 

‘ I am very sorry to trouble you at such an unfortunate mo- 
ment, sir, and I will be brief; but, as your nephew’s spiritual 
pastor ’ (He knew the banker was a stout Churchman.) 

‘ What of my nephew, sir ? No fresh misfortunes, 1 
hope V 

‘Not so much misfortune, sir, as misconduct — I might say, 
frailty — but frailty which may become ruinous.’ 

‘How? how? Some mesalliance?'^ interrupted Mr. Smith, 
in a peevish, excited tone. ‘ I thought there was some heiress 
on the topis — at least, so I heard from my unfortunate son, 
who has just gone over to Rome. There’s another misfortune. 
— Nothing but misfortunes ; and your teaching, sir, by-the-by, 
I am afraid, has helped me to that one.’ 

‘ Gone over to Rome ?’ asked the vicar, slowly. 

‘ Yes, sir, gone to Rome — to the pope, sir ! — to the devil, sir ! 
I should have thought you likely to know of it before I did !’ 

The vicar stared fixedly at him a moment, and burst into 
honest tears. The banker was moved. 

‘ ’Pon my honor, sir, I beg your pardon. I did not mean to 


THUNDER-STORM THE SECOND. 


169 


be rudf, but — but To be plain with a clergyman, sir, so 

many things coming together have quite unmanned me. Pooh, 
pooh,’ and he shook himself as if to throw off a weight ; and 
with a face once more quiet and business-like, asked, ‘And 
now, my dear sir, what of my nephew V 

‘ As for that young lady, sir, of whom you spoke, I can 
assure you, once for all, as her clergyman, and, therefore, more 
or less her — her confidant, that your nephew has not the slight- 
est chance or hope in that quarter.’ 

‘ How, sir ? You will not throw obstacles in the way V 
‘ Heaven, sir, I think, has interposed far more insuperable 
obstacles — in the young lady’s own heart — than I could ever 
have done. Your nephew’s character and opinions, I am sorry 
to say, are not such as are likely to command the respect and 
affection of a pure and pious Churchworaan.’ 

‘ Opinions, sir ? What, is he turning Papist too V 
‘ I am afraid, sir, and more than afraid, for he makes no se- 
cret of it himself, that his views tend rather in the opposite di- 
rection ; to an infidelity so subversive of the commonest prin- 
ciples of morality, that I expept, weekly, to hear of some un- 
blushing and disgraceful outrage against decency, committed 
by him under its fancied sanction. And you know, as well as 
myself, the double danger of some profligate outbreak, which 
always attends the miseries of a disappointed earthly passion.’ 

‘Trug, very true. We must get the boy out of the way, sir. 
[ must have him under my eye.’ 

‘Exactly so, sir,’ said the subtile vicar, who had been driving 
at this very point. ‘How much better for him to be here, 
using his great talents to the advantage of his family in an hon- 
orable profession, than to remain where he is, debauching body 
and mind by hopeless dreams, godless studies, and frivolous 
excesses.’ 

‘ When do you return, sir V 
‘ An hour hence, if I can be of service to you.’ 

The banker paused a moment. 

H 


lYO THUNDER-STORM THE SECOND. 

‘You are a gentleman’ (with an emphasis on the word), 
‘and, as such, I can trust you.’ 

‘Say, rather, as a clergyman.’ 

‘Pardon me, but I have found your cloth give little addi- 
tional cause for confidence. I have been as much bitten by 
clergymen — I have seen as sharp practice among them, in 
money matters as well as in religious squabbles, as I have in 
any class. Whether it is that their book education leaves 
them very often ignorant of the plain rules of honor which bind 
men of the w^orld, or whether their zeal makes them think that 
the end justifies the means, I can not tell ; but ’ 

‘But,’ said the vicar, half smiling, half severely, ‘you must 
not disparage the priesthood before a priest.’ 

‘ 1 know it, I know it ; and I beg your pardon : but if you 
knew the cause I have to complain. The slipperiness, sir, of 
one stagging parson, has set rolling this very avalanche, which 
gathers size every moment, and threatens to overwhelm me 
now, unless that idle dog Lancelot will condescend to bestir 
himself, and help me.’ 

The vicar heard, but said nothing. 

‘ Me, at least, you can trust,’ he answered proudly ; and 
honestly, too — for he was a gentleman by birth and breeding, 
unselfish and chivalrous to a fault — and yet, when he heard the 
banker’s words, it was as if the inner voice bad whispered to 
him, ‘ Thou art the man !’ 

‘When do you go down?’ again asked Mr. Smith. ‘To tell 
you the truth, I was writing to Lancelot when you were an- 
nounced ; but the post will not reach him till to-morrow al 
noon, and we are all so busy here, that I have no one whom 1 
can trust to carry down an express.’ 

The vicar saw what was coming. Was it his good ange) 
which prompted him to interpose ? 

‘ Why not send a parcel by rail ?’ 

‘ I can trust the rail as far as D ; but I can not trust 

those coaches. Tf you could do me so great a kindness ^ 


THUNDER-STORM THE SECOND. 


171 


‘ I will. I can start by the one o’clock train, and by ten 
o’clock to-night I shall be in Whitford.’ 

‘ Are you certain V 

‘ If God shall please, I am certain.’ 

‘ And will you take charge of a letter ? Perhaps, too, you 
could see him yourself ; and tell him, tell him — you see I trust 
you with every thing — that my fortune, his own fortune, de- 
pends on his being here to-morrow morning. He must start 
to-night, sir — to-night, tell him, if there were twenty Miss Lav- 
ingtons in Whitford, or he is a ruined man !’ 

The letter was written, and put into the vicar’s hands, with 
a hundred entreaties from the terrified banker. A cab was 
called, and the clergyman rattled off to the railway terminus. 

‘ Well,’ said he to himself, ‘ God has indeed blessed my 
errand; giving, as always, ‘exceeding abundantly more than 
we are able to ask or think !’ For some weeks, at least, this 
lamb is safe from the destroyer’s clutches. I must improve to 
the utmost those few precious days, in strengthening her in her 
holy purpose. But, after all, he will return, daring and cun- 
ning as ever; and then, will not the fascination recommence?’ 

And, as he mused, a little fiend passed by, and whispered, 
‘ Unless he comes up to-night he is a ruined man.’ 

It was Friday, and the vicar had thought it a fit preparation 
for so important an errand to taste no food that day. Weak- 
ness and hunger, joined to the roar and bustle of London, had 
made him excited, nervous, unable to control his thoughts, or 
fight against a stupefying headache ; and his self-weakened will 
punished him, by yielding him up an easy prey to his own fancies. 

‘ Ay,’ he thought, ‘ if he were ruined, after all, it would be 
well for God’s cause. The Lavingtons, at least, would find no 
temptation in his wealth ; and Argemone — she is too proud, 
too luxurious, to marry a beggar. She might embrace a holy 
poverty for the sake of her own soul ; but for the gratification 
of an earthly passion, never ! Base and carnal delights would 
never tempt her so far.’ 


112 


THUNDER-STORM THE SECOND. 


Alas, poor pedant ! Among all that thy books taught thee, 
they did not open to thee much of the depths of that human 
heart which thy dogmas taught thee to despise as diabolic. 

Again the little fiend whispered, — 

‘ Unless he comes up to-night, he is a ruined man.’ 

‘ And what if he is V thought the vicar. ‘ Eiches are a 
curse ; and poverty a blessing. Is it not his wealth which is 
ruining his soul ? Idleness and fullness of bread have made 
him what he is — a luxurious and self-willed dreamer, battening 
on his own fancies. Were it not rather a boon to him to take 
from him the root of all evil ?’ 

Most true, vicar. And yet the devil was at that moment 
transforming himself into an angel of light for thee. 

But the vicar was yet honest. If he had thought that by 
cutting off his right hand he could have 'saved Lancelot’s soul 
(by canonical methods, of course ; for who would wish to save 
souls in any other?) he would have done it without hesitation. 

Again the little fiend whispered, — 

‘ Unless he comes up to-night, he is a ruined man.’ 

A terrible temptation seized him. — Why should he give the 
letter to-night ? 

‘ You promised,’ whispered the inner voice. 

‘ No, I did not promise exactly, in so many words ; that is, 
I only said I would be at home to-night, if God pleased. And 
what if God should not please ? — I promised for his good. 
What if, on second thoughts, it should be better for him not to 
keep my promise V 

A moment afterward, he tossed the temptation from him in- 
dignantly : but back it came. At every gaudy shop, at every 
smoke-grimed manufactory, at the face of every anxious victim 
of Mammon, of every sturdy, cheerful artisan, the fiend winked 
and pointed, crying, ‘ And what if he be ruined ? Look at 
the thousands who have, and are miserable — at the millions 
who have not, and are no sadder than their own tyrants.’ 

Again and again he thrust the thought from him, but more 


THUNDER-STORM THE SECOND, 


173 


and more weakly. His whole frame shook ; the perspiration 
stood on his forehead. As he took his railway ticket, his look 
w^as so haggard and painful that the clerk asked him whether 
he were ill. The train was just starting ; he threw himself 
into a carriage — he would have locked himself in it if he 
could ; and felt an inexpressible relief when he found himself 
rushing past houses and market-gardens, whirled onward, 
whether he would or not, in the right path — homeward. 

But was it the right path ? for again the temptation flitted 
past him. He threw himself back, and tried to ask counsel 
of One above ; but there was no answer, nor any that regarded. 
His heart was silent, and dark as midnight fog. Why should 
there have been an answer ? He had not listened to the voice 
within. Did he wish for a miracle to show him his duty ? 

‘ Not that I care for detection,’ he said to himself. ‘ What 
is shame to me ? Is it not glory to be evil-spoken of in the 
cause of Grod ? How can the world appreciate the motives ot 
those who are not of the world ? — the divine wisdom of the 
serpent — at once the saint’s peculiar weapon, and a part of his 
peculiar cross, when men call him a deceiver, because they con- 
found, forsooth, his spiritual subtilty with their earthly cunning. 
Have I not been called ‘liar,’ ‘hypocrite,’ ‘Jesuit,’ often 
enough already, to harden me toward bearing that name once 
again ?’ 

That led him into sad thoughts of his last few years’ career, 
— of the friends and pupils whose secession to Rome had been 
attributed to his hypocrisy, his ‘ disguised Romanism ;’ and then 
the remembrance of poor Luke Smith flashed across him for 
the first time since he left the bank. 

‘I must see him,’ he snid to himself; ‘I must argue with 
him face to face. Who knows but that it may be given even 
to my un worth! ness to snatch him from this accursed slough V 

And then he remembered that his way home lay through the 
city in which the new convert’s parish was — that the coach 
stopped there to change horses ; and again the temptation leapt 


174 


T«UNDER-STORM THE SECOND. 


up again, stronger than ever, under the garb of an imperative 
call of duty. 

He made no determination for or against it. He was too 
weak in body and mind to resist ; and in a half-sleep, broken 
with an aching, terrified sense of something wanting, which he 
could not find, he was swept down the line, got on the coach, 
and mechanically, almost without knowing it, found himself set 

down at the city of A , and the coach rattling away down 

the street. 

He sprung from his stupor, and called madly after it — ran a 
few steps — 

‘ You might as well try to catch the clouds, sir,’ said the ost- 
ler. ‘ Gemmen should make up their minds afore they gets 
down.’ 

Alas ! so thought the vicar. But it was too late ; and, with 
a heavy heart, he asked the way to the late cui’ate’s house. 

Thither he went. Mr. Luke Smith was just at dinner, but 
the vicar was, nevertheless, shown into the bachelor’s little di- 
ning-room. But what was his disgust and disappointment at 
finding his late pupil tete-a-tHe over a comfortable fish-dinner, 
opposite a burly, vulgar, cunning-eyed man, with a narrow rim 
of muslin turned down over a stiff cravat, of whose profession 
there could be no doubt. 

‘ My dearest sir,’ said the new convert, springing up with an 
air of extreme empressement^ ‘what an unexpected pleasure ! 
Allow me to introduce you to my excellent friend. Padre Bu- 
giardo !’ 

The padre rose, bowed obsequiously, ‘ was overwhelmed with 
delight at being at last introduced to one of whom he had heard 
so much,’ sat down again, and poured himself out a bumper of 
sherry ; while the vicar commenced making the best of a bad 
matter by joining in the now necessary business of eating. 

He had not a word to say for himself. Poor Luke was par- 
ticularly jovial and flippant, and startlingly unlike his former 
self. The padre went on staring out of the window, and talk- 


THUNDER-STORM THE SECOND 


175 


ing in a loud forced tone about the astonishing miracles of the 
‘Ecstantica’ and ‘ Addolorata and the poor vicar, finding the 
purpose for which he had sacrificed his own word of honor utterly 
frustrated by the priest’s presence, sat silent and crest-fallen the 
whole evening. 

The priest had no intention of stirring. The late father-con- 
fcssor tried to out-stay his new rival, but in vain ; the padre delib- 
erately announced his intention of taking a bed, and the vicar, 
with a heavy heart, rose to go to his inn. 

As he went out at the door, he caught an opportunity of say- 
ing one word to the convert. 

‘ My poor Luke ! and are ypu happy ? Tell me honestly, in 
God’s sight, tell me !’ 

‘ Happier than ever I w’as in my life ! No more self-torture, 
physical or mental, now. These good priests thoroughly un- 
derstand poor human nature, I can assure you.’ 

The vicar sighed, for the speech was evidently meant as a 
gentle rebuke to himself. But the young man ran on, half- 
laughing, — 

‘ You know how you and the rest used to tell us what a sad 
thing it was that we were all cursed with consciences, — what a 
fearful, miserable burden moral responsibility was ; but that we 
must submit to it as an inevitable evil. Now that burden is 
gone, thank God ! We of the True Church have some one to 
keep our consciences for us. The padre settles all about what 
is right or wrong, and we slip on as easily as ’ 

‘ A hog or a butterfly !’ said the vicar, bitterly. 

* Exactly,’ answered Luke. ‘ And, on your own showing, are 
clear gainers of a happy life here, not to mention heaven here- 
after. God bless you ! We shall soon see you one of us.’ 

‘Never, so help me God!’ said the vicar; all the more 
fiercely because he was aimost at that moment of the young 
man’s opinion. 

The vicar stepped out into the night. The rain, which had 
given place during the afternoon to a bright sun, and clear chilly 


116 


THUNDER-STORM THE SECOND. 


evening, had returned with double fury. The wind was sweep- 
ing and howling down the lonely streets, and lashed the rain 
into his face, while gray clouds were rushing past the moon like 
terrified ghosts across the awful void of the black heaven. 
Above him gaunt poplars groaned and bent, like giants cower- 
ing from the wrath of Heaven, yet rooted by grim necessity to 
their place of torture. The roar and tumult without him har- 
monized strangely with the discord within. He staggered and 
strode along the plashy pavement, muttering to himself, at in- 
tervals, — 

‘ Best for the soul ? peace of mind ? I have been promising 
them all my life to others — ^liave I found them myself? And 
here is this poor boy saying that he has gained them — in the 
very barbarian superstition which I have been anathematizing 
to him ! What is true, at this rate ? What is false ? Is any 
thing right or wrong, except in so far as men feel it to be right 
or wrong? Else whence does this poor fellow’s peace come, or 
the peace of many a convert more ? They have all, one by one, 
told me the same story. And is not a religion to be known by 
its fruits? Are they not right in going where they can get 
peace of mind ?’ 

Certainly, vicar. If peace of mind be the summum honxim^ 
and religion is merely the science of self-satisfaction, they are 
right ; and your wisest plan will be to follow them at once, or, 
failing that, to apply to the next best substitute that can be dis- 
covered — alcohol and opium. 

As he went on, talking wildly to himself, he passed the Un- 
ion Workhouse. Opposite the gate, under the lee of a wall, 
some twenty men, women and children, were huddled together 
on the bare ground. They had been refused lodging in the 
workhouse, and w’ere going to pass the night in that situation. 
As he came up to them, coarse jests, and snatches of low drink- 
ing-songs, ghastly as the laughter of lost spirits in the pit, min- 
gled with the feeble wailings of some child of shame. The 
vicar recollected how he had seen the same sight at the door of 


THUNDER-STORM THE SECOND. 


Kensington Workhouse, walking home one night in company 
with Luke Smith ; and how, too, he had commented to him on 
that fearful sign of the times, and had sornewhat unfairly drawn 
a contrast between the niggard cruelty of ‘ popular Protestant- 
ism,’ and the fancied ‘liberality of the middle age.’ What 
wonder if his pupil had taken him at his word ? 

Delighted to escape from his own thoughts by any thing like 
action, he pulled out his purse to give an alms. There was no 
silver in it, but only some fifteen or twenty sovereigns, which he had 
that day received as payment for some bitter reviews in a lead- 
ing religious periodical. Every thing that night seemed to 
shame and confound him more. As he touched the money, 
there sprung up in his mind in an instant the thought of the 
articles which had procured it; by one of those terrible, search- 
ing inspirations, in which the light which lighteth every man, 
awakes as a lightning-flash of judgment, — he saw them, and his 
own heart, for one moment, as they were ; — their blind prejudi- 
ces ; their reckless imputations of motives ; their willful conceal- 
ment of any palliating clauses ; their party nicknames, given 
without a shudder at the terrible accusations which they con- 
veyed. And then the indignation, the shame, the reciprocal 
bitterness, which those articles would excite, tearing still wider 
the bleeding wounds of that Church which they professed to 
defend ! And then, in this case, too, the thought rushed across 
him, ‘ What if I should have been wrong and my adversary 
right? What if I have made the heart of the righteous sad 
whom God has not made sad ? I ! to have been dealing out 
Heaven’s thunders, as if I were infallible! I, who am certain 
at this moment of no fact in heaven or earth except my own 
untruth ! God ! who am I that I should judge another ?’ And 
the coins seemed to him like the price of blood. — He fancied 
that he felt them red-hot to his hand, and, in his eagerness to 
get rid of the accursed things, he dealt it away fiercely to the 
astonished group, amid whining and flattery, wrangling and 

H* 


118 


THUNDER-STORM THE SECOND. 


ribaldry ; and then, not daring to wait and see the use to which 
his money would be put, hurried off to the inn, and tried in 
uneasy slumbers to forget the time, until the mail passed through 
at daybreak on its waj to Whitford. 


CHAPTEE XIIL 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 

At dusk that same evening the two had started for the vil- 
lage tair. A velveteen shooting-jacket, a pair of corduroy trow- 
sers, and a waistcoat, furnished by Tregarva, covered with flow- 
ers of every imaginable hue, tolerably disguised Lancelot, who 
was recommended by his conductor to keep his hands in his 
pockets as much as possible, lest their delicacy, which was, as il 
happened, not very remarkable, might betray him. As they 
walked together along the plashy turnpike road, overtaking, 
now and then, groups of two or three who were out on the 
same errand as themselves, Lancelot could not help remarking 
to the keeper how superior was the look of comfort in the boys 
and young men, with their ruddy cheeks and smart dresses, to 
the worn and haggard appearance of the elder men. 

‘ Let them alone, poor fellows,’ said Tregarva ; ‘ it won’t last 
long. When they’ve got two or three children at their heels, 
they’ll look as thin and shabby as their own fathers.’ 

‘ They must spend a great deal of money on their clothes.’ 

‘ And on their stomachs too, sir. They never lay by a far- 
thing ; and I don’t see how they can, when (heir club-money’s 
paid, and their insides are well filled.’ 

‘ Do you mean to say that they actually have not as much 
to eat after they marry ?’ 

‘ Indeed and I do, sir. They get no more wages afterward 
round here, and have four or five to clothe and feed off the same 


180 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


money that used to keep one ; and that sum won’t take long to 
work out, I think.’ 

‘But do they not, in some places, pay the married men high- 
er wages than the unmarried ?’ 

‘ That’s a worse trick still, sir ; for it tempts the poor thought- 
less boys to go and marry the first girl they can get hold of ; 
and it don’t want much persuasion to make them do that at 
any time.’ 

‘ But why don’t the clergymen teach them to put into the 
savings’-banks ?’ 

‘One here and there, sir, says what he can, though it’s of 
very little use. Besides, every one is afraid of savings’-banks 
now ; not a year but one reads of some breaking, and the law- 
yers going off with the earnings of the poor. And if they didn’t, 
youth’s a foolish time at best ; and the carnal man will be hank- 
ering after amusement, sir — amusement.’ 

‘ And no wonder,’ said Lancelot ; ‘ at all events, I should not 
think they got much of it. But it does seem strange that no 
higher amusement can be found for them than the beer-shop. 
Can’t they read ? Can’t they practice light and interesting 
handicrafts at home, as the German peasantry do V 

‘Who’ll teach ’em, sir ? From the plow-tail to the reap- 
ing-hook, and back again, is all they know. Besides, sir, they 
are not like us Cornish ; they are a stupid, pig-headed genera- 
tion, at the best, these south countrymen. They’re grown up 
babies, who want the parson and the squire to be leading them, 
and preaching to them, and spurring them on, and coaxing 
them up, every moment. And as for scholarship, sir, a boy 
leaves school at nine or ten to follow the horses ; and between 
that time and his wedding-day, he forgets every word he ever 
learnt, and becomes, for the most part, as thorough a heathen 
savage at heart, as those wild Indians in the Brazils used to be.* 

‘And then we call them civilized Englishmen!’ said Lance- 
lot. ‘We can see that your Indian is a savage, because he 
wears skins and feathers ; but your Irish cotter or vour English 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


T81 


laborer, because he happens to wear a coat and trowsers, is to bo 
considered a civilized man.’ 

‘It’s the way of the world, sir,’ said Tregarva, ‘judging car- 
nal judgment, according to the sight of its own eyes ; always 
looking at the outsides of things and men, sir, and never much 
deeper. But as for reading, sir, it’s all very well for me, who 
have been a keeper and dawdled about like a gentleman with a 
gun over my arm ; but did you ever do a good day’s farm-work 
in your life ? If you had, man or boy, you wouldn’t have been 
game for much reading when you got home ; you’d do just 
what these poor fellows do, — tumble into bed at eight o’clock, 
hardly waiting to take your clothes off, knowing that you must 
turn up again at five o’clock the next morning, to get a break- 
fast of bread, and, perhaps, a dab of the squire’s dripping, and 
then back to work again; and so on, day after day, sir, week 
after week, year after year, without a hope or a chance of being 
any thing but what you are, and only too thankful if you can 
get work to break your back, and catch the rheumatism over.’ 

‘ But do you mean to say that their labor is so severe and in- 
cessant ?’ 

‘ It’s only God’s blessing if it is incessant, sir ; for if it stops, 
they starve, or go to the house to be worse fed than the thieves 
in jail. And as for its being severe, there’s many a boy, as 
their mothers will tell you, comes home, night after night, too 
tired to eat their suppers, and tumble, fiisting, to bed, in the 
same foul shirt which they’ve been working in all the day, nev- 
er changing their rag of calico from week’s end to week’s end, 
or washing the skin that’s under it, once in seven years.’ 

‘ No wonder,’ said Lancelot, ‘ that such a life of drudgery 
makes them brutal and reckless.’ 

‘No wonder, indeed, sir: they’ve no time to think ; they’re 
born to be machines, and machines they must be ; and I think, 
sir,’ he added, bitterly, ‘ it’s God’s mercy that they daren’t think. 
It’s God’s mercy that they don’t feel. Men that write books 
and talk at elections, call this a free country, and s.av that the 


182 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


poorest and meanest lias a free opening to rise and become 
prime minister, if he can. But you see, sir, the misfortune is, 
that in practice he can’t; for one who gets into a gentleman’s 
family, or into a little shop, and so saves a few pounds, fifty 
know that they’ve no chance before them, but day-laborer born, 
day-laborer live, from hand to mouth, scraping and pinching 
to get, not meat and beer, even, but bread and potatoes ; and 
then, at the end of it all, for a worthy reward, half a crown a 
week of parish pay — or the workhouse. That’s a lively, hope- 
ful prospect for a Christian man !’ 

‘But,’ said Lancelot, ‘I thought this new Poor-law was to 
stir them up to independence V 

‘ Oh, sir, the old law has bit too deep : it made them slaves 
and beggars at heart. It taught them not to be ashamed of 
parish pay — to demand it as a right.’ 

‘ And so it is their right,’ said Lancelot. ‘ In God’s name, 
if a country is so ill-constituted that it can not find its own cit- 
izens in work, it is bound to find them in food.’ 

‘Maybe, sir, maybe. God knows I don’t grudge it them. 
It’s a poor pittance at best, when they have got it. But don’t 
you see, sir, how all poor-laws, old or new either, suck the in- 
dependent spirit out of a man ; how they make the poor 
wretch reckless ; how they tempt him to spend every extra 
farthing in amusement V 
‘ How then V 

‘Why, he is always tempted to say to himself, ‘Whatever 
happens to me, the parish must keep me. If I am sick, it must 
doctor me ; if I am worn out, it must feed me ; if I die, it 
must bury me ; if I leave my children paupers, the parish must 
look after them, and they’ll be as well off with the parish as 
they were with me. Now they’ve only got just enough to keep 
body and soul together, and the parish can’t give them less 
than that. What’s the use of cutting myself off from sixpenny- 
worth of pleasure here, and sixpenny-worth there ? I’m not 
saving money for my children, 7’m onl^ saving the farmers' 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


183 


rates ^ There it is, sir,’ said Tregarva ; ‘ that’s the bottom of it. 
sir, — ‘ I’m only saving the farmers’ rates.’ ‘ Let us eat and 
drink, for to-morrow we die !’ ’ 

‘ I don’t see my way out of it,’ said Lancelot. 

‘ So says every body, sic. But I should have thought those 
members of parliament, and statesmen, and university scholars, 
have been set up in the high places, out of the wood where we 
are all struggling and scrambling, just that they might see their 
way out of it; and if they don’t, sir, and that soon, as sure as 
God is in heaven, these poor fellows will cut their way out of it.’ 

‘And, blindfold and ignorant as they are,’ said Lancelot, 
‘they wull be certain to cut their way out just in the wrong di- 
rection.’ 

‘I’m not so sure of that, sir,’ said Tregarva, lowering his 
voice. ‘ What is written ? That there is One who hears the 
desire of the poor. ‘Lord, Thou prepares! their heart, and 
Thine ear hearkeneth thereto, to help the fatherless and poor 
unto their right, that the man of the earth be no more exalted 
against them.’ ’ 

‘Why, you are talking like any Chartist, Tregarva!’ 

‘ Am I, sir ? I haven’t heard much Scripture quoted among 
them myself, poor fellow^s ; but to tell you the truth, sir, I don’t 
know what I am becoming. I’m getting half mad with all I 
see going on and not going on ; and you will agree, sir, that 
what’s happened this day can’t have done much to^cool my 
temper or brighten my hopes ; though God’s my witness, there’s 
no spite in me for my own sake. But what makes me maddest 
of all, sir, is to see that every body sees these evils except just 
the men who can cure them — the squires and the clergy.’ 

‘ Why surely, Tregarva, there are hundreds, if not thousands, 
of clergymen and landlords working heart and soul at this mo- 
ment, to better the condition of the laboring classes !’ 

‘Ay, sir, they see the evils, and yet they don’t see them. 
They do not see what is the matter with the poor man ; and 
the proof of it is, sir, that the poor have no confidence in them. 


184 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


They’ll take their alms, but they’ll hardly take their schoolings 
and their advice they won’t take at all. And why is it, sir ? 
Because the poor have got in their heads in these days a strange 
confused fancy, maybe, but still a deep and a fierce one, that 
they haven’t got what they call their rights, [f you were to 
raise the wages of every man in this country from nine to twelve 
hillings a-week to-morrow, you wouldn’t satisfy them ; at least, 
the only ones whom you wuuld satisfy would be the mere hogs 
among them, who, as long as they can get a full stomach, care 
for nothing else.’ 

‘ What, in Heaven’s name, do they want ?’ asked Lancelot. 

‘They hardly know yet, sir; but they know well what they 
don’t want. The question with them, sir, believe me, is not so 
much. How shall we get better fed and better housed, but whom 
shall we depend upon for our food and for our house ? Why 
should we depend on the will and fancy of any man for our 
rights ? They are asking ugly questions among themselves, sir, 
about what those two words, rent and taxes, mean, and about 
what that same strange word, freedom, means. Right or wrong, 
they’ve got the thought into their heads, and it’s growing there, 
and they will find an answer for it. Depend upon it, sir, I tell 
you a truth, and they expect a change. You will hear them 
talk of it to-night, sir, if you’ve luck.’ 

‘ We all expect a change, for that matter,’ said Lancelot. 
‘That feeling is common to all classes and parties just now.’ 

Tregarva took off his hat. 

‘ ‘For the word of the Lord hath spoken it.’ Do you know, 
sir, I long at times that I did agree with those Chartists. If I 
did, I’d turn lecturer to-morrow. How a man could speak out 
then ! If he saw any door of hope, any way of salvation for 
these poor fellows, even if it was nothing better than salvation 
by act of parliament 1’ 

‘ But why don’t you trust the truly worthy among the clergy 
and the gentry to leaven their own ranks, and bring all right in 
time?’ 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


185 


‘ Because, sir, they seem to be going the way only to make 
things worse. The people have been so dependent on them 
heretofore, that they have become thorough beggars. You can 
have no knowledge, sir, of the whining, canting, deceit, and lies 
which those poor miserable laborers’ wives palm on charitable 
ladies. If they weren’t angels, some of them, they’d lock up their 
pui'ses and never give away another farthing. And, sir, these 
free-schools, and these penny clubs, and clothing-clubs, and these 
heaps of money which are given away, all make the matter worse 
and worse. They make the laborer fancy that he is not to de- 
pend upon God and his own right hand, but on what his wife can 
worm out of the good-nature of the rich. Why, sir, they growl 
as insolently now at the parson or the squire’s wife if they don’t 
get as much money as their neighbors, as they used to at the 
parish vestrymen under the old law. Look at that Lord Vieux- 
bois, sir, as sweet a gentleman as ever God made. It used to 
do me good to walk behind him when he came over here 
shooting, just to hear the gentle, kind-hearted w^ay in which he 
used to speak to every old soul he met. He spends his whole 
life and time about the poor, I hear. But, sir, as sure as you 
live, he’s making his people slaves and humbugs. He doesn’t 
see, sir, that they w’ant to be raised bodily out of this miserable 
hand-to-mouth state, to be' brought nearer up to him, and set 
on a footing where they can shift for themselves. Without 
meaning it, sir, all his boundless charities are keeping the peo- 
ple down, and telling them they must stay down, and not help 
themselves, but wait for what he gives them. He fats prize- 
laborers, sir, just as Lord Minchampstead fats prize-oxen and 
pigs.’ 

Lancelot could not help thinking of that amusingly incon- 
sistent, however well-meant, scene in Coningshy^ in which Mr. 
L} lo is represented as trying to restore ‘ the independent ordei 
of peasantry,’ by making them receivers of public alms at his own 
gate, as if they had been middle-age serfs or vagabonds, and 
not citizens of modern England. 


186 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


‘ It may suit the Mr. Lyles of this age,’ thought Lancelot, ‘ to 
make the people constantly and visibly comprehend that prop- 
erty is their protector and their friend,’ but I question whether 
it will suit the people themselves, unless they can make prop 
erty understand that it owes them something more definite 
than protection.’ 

Saddened by this conversation, which had helped to give 
another shake to the easy-going complacency with which Lance- 
lot had been used to contemplate the world below him, and 
look on its evils as necessaries, ancient and fixed as the uni- 
verse, he entered the village fair, and was a little disappointed 
at his first glimpse of the village-green. Certainly his expecta- 
tions had not been very exalted ; but there had run through 
them a hope of something melodramatic, dreams of May-pole 
dancing and athletic games, somewhat of village-belle rivalry, 
of the Corin and Sylvia school ; or failing that, a few Touch- 
stones and Audreys, some genial earnest buffo humor, here and 
there. But there did not seem much likelihood of it. Two or 
three apple and gingerbread -stalls, from which draggled chil- 
dren were turning slowly and wistfully away to go home ; a 
booth full of trumpery fairings, in front of which tawdry girls 
were coaxing maudlin youths, with faded southernwood in their 
button-holes ; another long low booth, from every crevice of 
which reeked odors of stale beer, and smoke, by courtesy de- 
nominated tobacco, to the treble accompaniment of a jigging 
fiddle and a tambourine, and the bass one of grumbled oaths 
and curses within — these were the means of relaxation which 
the piety, freedom, and civilization of fourteen centuries, from 
Hengist to Queen Victoria, had devised and made possible for 
the English peasant ! 

‘There seems very little here to see,’ said Lancelot, half 
peevishly. 

‘ I think, sir,’ quoth Tregarva, ‘ that very thing is what’s 
most worth seeing.’ 

Lancelot could not help, even at the risk of detection, invest- 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


187 


ing capital enough in sugar-plums and gingerbread, to furnish 
the urchins around with the material for a whole carnival of 
stomach-aches ; and he felt a great inclination toclear the fairing- 
stall in a like manner, on behalf of the poor bedizened sickly- 
looking girls round, but he was afraid of the jealousy of some 
beer-bemuddled swain. The ill-looks of the young girls sur- 
prised him much. Here and there smiled a plump rosy face 
enough ; but the majority seemed under-sized, under-fed, utterly 
wanting in grace, vigor, and what the penny-a-liners call ‘ rude 
health.’ He remarked it to Tregarva. The keeper smiled 
mournfully. 

‘ You see those little creatures dragging home babies in arms 
nearly as big as themselves, sir. That and bad food, want of 
milk especially, accounts for their growing up no bigger than 
they do ; and as for their sad countenances, sir, most of them 
must carry a lighter conscience before they carry a brighter 
face.’ 

‘ What do you mean ? asked Lancelot. 

‘ The clergymen who enters the weddings and the baptisms 
knows well enough what I mean, sir. But we’ll go into that 
booth, if you want to see the thick of it, sir; that’s to say, if 
you’re not ashamed.’ 

‘ I hope we need neither of us do any thing to be ashamed 
of there ; and as for seeing, I begin to agree with you, that 
what makes the whole thing most curious is its intense dull- 
ness.’ 

‘ What upon earth is that T 

‘ I say, look out there !’ 

‘ Well, you look out yourself!’ 

This was caused by a violent blow across the shins with a 
thick stick, the deed of certain drunken wise-acres who were 
persisting in playing in the dark the never very lucrative game 
of three sticks a-penny, conducted by a couple of gipsys. Poor 
fellows there was one excuse for them. It was the only thing 
there to play at, except a set of skittles ; and on those they had 


188 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


lost their money every Saturday night for the last seven years 
each at his own village beer-shop. 

So into the booth they turned ; and as soon as Lancelot’s 
eyes were accustomed to the reeking atmosphere, he saw seated 
at two long temporary tables of board, fifty or sixty of ‘ My 
Brethren,’ as clergymen call them in their sermons, wrangling, 
stupid, beery, with sodden eyes and drooping lips — interspersed 
with more girls and brazen-faced women, with dirty flowers in 
their caps, whose whole business seemed to be to cast jealous 
looks at each other, and defend themselves from the coarse 
overtures of their swains. 

Lancelot had been already perfectly astonished at the foul- 
ness of language which prevailed ; and the utter absence of any 
thing like chivalrous respect, almost of common decency, to- 
ward women. But lo ! the lano’uao^e of the elder women was 
quite as disgusting as that of the men, if not worse. He 
whispered a remark on the point to Tregarva, who shook his head. 

‘It’s the field-work, sir — the field-work, that does it all. 
They get accustomed there from their childhood to hear words 
whose very meanings they shouldn’t know ; and the elder teach 
the younger ones, and the married ones are worst of all. It 
\vears them out in body, sir, that field-work, and makes them 
brutes in soul and in manners.’ 

‘ Why don’t they give it up? Why don’t the respectable 
ones set their faces against it ?’ 

‘ They can’t afford it, sir. They must go a-field, or go hun- 
gered, most of them. And they get to like the gossip, and 
scandal, and coarse fun of it, while their children are left at 
home to play in the roads, or fall into the fire, as plenty do every 
year.’ 

‘ Why not at school ?’ 

‘ The big ones are kept at home, sir, to play at nursing those 
little ones who are too young to go. Oh, sir,’ he added, in a 
tone of deep feeling, ‘ it is very little of a father’s care or a 
mother’s love, that a laborer’s child knows in these days !’ 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


189 


Lancelot looked round the booth with a hopeless feeling. 
Thare was awkward dancing going on at the upper end. He 
was too much sickened to go and look at it. He began ex- 
amining the faces and foreheads of the company, and was as- 
tonished at the first glance by the lofty and ample develop- 
ment of brain in at least one half. There were intellects there 
— or rather capacities of intellect, capable, surely, of any thing, 
had not the promise of the brow been almost always belied by 
the loose and sensual lower features. They were evidently 
rather a degraded than an undeveloped race. ‘ The low fore- 
head of the Kabyle and Koord,’ thought Lancelot, ‘ is compen- 
sated by the grim sharp lip, and glittering eye, which prove 
that all the small capabilities of the man have been called out 
into clear and vigorous action : but here the very features 
themselves, both by what they have and what they want, tes- 
tify against that society, which carelessly wastes her most 
precious wealth, the manhood of her masses ! Tregarva ! you 
have observed a good many things — did you ever observe 
whether the men with the large foreheads were better than the 
men with the small ones V 

‘ Ay, sir, I know what you are driving at. I’ve heard of 
that new-fangled notion of scholars, which, if you’ll forgive my 
plain speaking, expects man’s brains to do the work of God’s 
grace.’ 

‘ But what have you remarked V 

‘ All I ever saw was, that the stupid-looking ones were the 
greatest blackguards, and the clever-looking ones the greatest 
rogues.’ 

Lancelot was rebuked, but not surprised. He had been for 
some time past suspecting, from the bitter experience of his 
own heart, the favorite modern theory, which revives the Neo- 
Platonism of Alexandria, by making intellect synonymous with 
virtue, and then jumbling, like poor bewildered Proclus, the 
‘ physical understanding’ of the brain, with the ‘ pure intellect’ 
of the spirit. 


190 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


‘ You’ll see someth jng, if you look round, sir, a great deal 
easier to explain — and, I should have thought, a great deal 
easier to cure — than want of wits.’ 

‘ And what is that V 

‘How different looking the young ones are from their fa- 
thers, and still more from their grandfathers ! Look at those 
three or four old grammers talking together there. For all 
their being shrunk with age and weather, you won’t see such 
fine grown men anywhere else in this booth.’ 

It was too true. Lancelot recollected now having remarked 
it before when at church ; and having wondered why almost 
all the youths were so much smaller, clumsier, lower-brained, 
and weaker-jawed than their elders. 

‘ Why is it, Tregarva ?’ 

‘ Worse food, worse lodging, worse nursing — and, I’m sore 
afraid, worse blood. There was too much filthiness and drunk- 
enness went on in the old war-times, not to leave a taint be- 
hind it, for many a generation. The prosperity of fools shall 
destroy them !’ 

‘ Oh !’ thought Lancelot, ‘ for some young sturdy Lancashire 
or Lothian blood, to put new life into the old frozen South- 
Saxon veins ! Even a drop of the warm enthusiastic Celtic 
would be better than none. Perhaps this Irish immigration 
may do some good, after all.’ 

Perhaps it may, Lancelot. Let us hope so, since it is pretty 
nearly inevitable. 

Sadder and sadder, Lancelot tried to listen to the conversa- 
tion of the men round him. To his astonishment he hardly 
understood a word of it. It was half articulate, nasal, guttural, 
made up almost entirely of vowels, like the speech of savages. 
He had never before been struck with the significant contrast 
between the sharp, clearly defined articulation, the vivid and 
varied tones of the gentleman, or even of the London street- 
boy, when compared with the coarse, half-formed growls, as of 
a company of seals, which he heard round him. That single 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


191 


fact struck him, perhaps, more deeply than any ; i- connected 
ih^elf with many of his physiological fancies ; it was the parent 
of many thoughts and plans of his after-life. Here and there 
he could distinguish a half-sentence. An old shrunken man 
opposite him was drawing figures in the spilled beer with his 
pipe-stem, and discoursing of the glorious times before the 
great war, ‘ when there was more food than there were mouths, 
and more work than there were hands.’ ‘ Poor hurnan nature 1’ 
thought Lancelot, as he tried to follow one of those unintelligible 
discussions about the relative prices of the loaf and the bushel 
of flour, which ended, as usual, in more swearing and mere 
quarreling, and more beer to make it up — ‘ Poor human nature ! 
always looking back, as the German sage says, to some fancied 
golden age, never looking forward to the real one which is 
coming !’ 

‘ But I say, vather,’ drawled out some one, ‘ they says there’s 
a sight more money in England now, than there was afore the 
war-time.’ 

‘ Ees, booy,’ said the old man, ‘ but iCs got into too few 
hands' 

‘Well,’ thought Lancelot, ‘there's a glimpse of practical 
sense, at least.’ iVnd a pedler who sat next him, a bold, black- 
whiskered bully, from the Potteries, hazarded a joke, — 

‘ It’s all along of this new sky-and-tough-it farming. The}' 
used to spread the money broadcast, but now they drills it all 
in one place, like bone-dust under their fancy plants, and we pool 
self-sown chaps gets none.’ 

This garland of fancies was received with great applause ; 
whereat the pedler, emboldened, proceeded to observe, myste- 
riously, that ‘ donkeys took a beating, but horses kicked at it ; 
and they’d found out that in Staffordshire long go. You want 
a good Chartist lecturer down here, my covies, to show you 
donkeys of laboring-men that you have got iron on your heels, 
if you only know’d how to use it.’ 

‘ And what’s the use of rioting V asked some one querulously 


192 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


‘ Why, if you don’t riot, the farmers will starve ycu. 

‘ And if we do, they’d turn sodgers, — ^yeomanry, as they call 
it, though there aint a yeoman among them in these parts ; 
and then they takes sword and kills us. So, riot or none, they 
has it all their own way.’ 

Lancelot heard many more scraps of this sort. He was 
very much struck with their dread of violence. It did not seem 
cowardice. It was not loyalty — the English laborer has fallen 
below the capability of so spiritual a feeling ; Lancelot had 
found out that already. It could not be apathy, for he heard 
nothing but complaint upon complaint bandied from mouth to 
mouth the whole evening. They seemed rather sunk too low in 
body and mind, — too stupefied and spiritless, to follow the ex- 
ample of the manufacturing districts ; above all, they were too 
ill-informed. It is not mere starvation which goads the Leices- 
ter weaver to madness. It is starvation with education, — an 
empty stomach and a cultivated, even though miscultivated, 
mind. 

At that instant, a huge hulking farm-boy rolled into the 
booth, roaring, dolefully, the end of a song, with a punctuation 
of his own invention, — 

He’ll maak me a lady . Zo . Vine to be zyure. 

And, vaithfully ; love me. Although ; I ; be-e ; poor-r-r-r. 

Lancelot would have laughed heartily at him anywhere else ; 
but the whole scene was past a jest ; and a gleam of pathos and 
tenderness seemed to shine even from that doggrel, — a vista, as 
it were, of true genial nature, in the far distance. But as he 
looked round again, ‘What hope,’ he thought, ‘of its realiza- 
tion ? Arcadian dreams of pastoral innocence and graceful in- 
dustry, I suppose, are to be henceforth monopolized by the stage 
or the boudoir ? Never, so help me God !’ 

The ursine howls of the new-comer seemed to have awakened 
the spirit of music in the party. 

‘ Coom, Blackburd, gi’us zong, Blackburd, bo’ !’ cried a 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


19S 


dozen voices to an impish, dark-eyed gipsy boy, of some thir- 
teen years o’d. 

‘ Put’n on taable. Now, then, pipe up !’ 

‘ What will ee ha’ ? 

‘ Mary ; gi’ us Mary.’ 

‘ I shall make a’ girls cry,’ quoth Blackbird, with a grin. 

‘ Do’n good, too ; they likes it : zing away.’ 

And the boy began, in a broad country twang, which could 
not overpower the sad^ melody of the air, or the rich sweetness 
of his flute-like voice, — 

Young Mary walked sadly down through the green clover, 

And sighed as she looked at the babe at her breast ; 

‘ My roses are faded, my false love a rover, 

The green graves they call me, ‘ Come home to your rest.’ ’ 

Then by rode a soldier in gorgeous arraying. 

And ‘ Where is your bride-ring, my fair maid V he cried ; 

* I ne’er had a bride-ring, by false man’s betraying, 

Nor token of love but this babe at my side, 

Tho’ gold could not buy me, sweet words could deceive me; 

So faithful and lonely till death I must roam.’ 

* Oh, Mary, sweet Mary, look up and forgive me. 

With wealth and with glory your true love comes home. 

So give me my own babe, those soft arms adorning. 

I’ll wed you and cherish you, never to stray ; 

For it’s many a dark and a wild cloudy morning 
Turns out by the noon-time a sunshiny day.’ 

‘ A bad moral that, sir,’ whispered Tregarva. 

‘ Better than none,’ answered Lancelot. 

‘ It’s well if you are right, sir, for you’ll hear no other.’ 

The keeper spoke truly ; in ^ dozen different songs, more or 
less coarsely, but, in general, with a dash of pathetic sentiment, 
the same case of lawless love was embodied. It seemed to be 
their only notion of the romantic. Now and then there was a 
poaching song ; then one of the lowest flash London school — 

I 


194 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


filth and all — was roared in chorus in the presence of the 
women. 

‘ I am afraid that you do not thank me for having brought 
you to any ])lace so unfit for a gentleman/ said Tregarva, see- 
ing Lancelot’s sad face. 

‘ Because it is so unfit for a gentleman, therefore I do thank 
you. It is right to know what one’s own flesh and blood are 
doing.’ 

‘ Hark to that song, sir ! that’s an old one. I didn’t think 
they’d get on to singing that.’ 

The Blackbird was again on the table, but seemed this time 
disinclined to exhibit. 

‘Out wi’ un, boy ; it w ain’t burn thy mouth !’ 

• 1 be afeard.’ 

‘ O’ who V 

‘Keper there.’ 

He pointed to Tregarva ; there was a fierce growl round the 
room. 

‘ I am no keeper,’ shouted Tregarva, starting up. ‘ I was 
turned off this morning for speaking my mind about the squires, 
and now I’m one of you, to live and die.’ 

This answer w^as received with a murmur of applause ; and 
a fellow in a scarlet merino neckerchief, three waistcoats, and a 
fancy shooting-jacket, who had been eying Lancelot for some 
time, sidled up behind them, and whispered in Tregarva’s 
ear, — 

‘ Perhaps you’d like an engagement in our line, young man ; 
and your friend there, he seems a sporting gent too. — We could 
show him very pretty shooting.’ 

Tregarva answered by the first and last oath Lancelot ever 
heard from Jiim, and turning to him, as the rascal sneaked 
off,— 

‘ That’s a poaching crimp from London, sir ; tempting these 
poor boys to sin, and deceit, and drunkenness, and theft, and 
the hulks.’ 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


195 


‘ I fancy I saw him somewhere the night of our row — you 
understand V 

‘ So do I, sir ; but there’s no use talking of it.’ 

Blackbird was by this time prevailed on to sing, and burst 
out as melodious as ever, while all heads were cocked on one 
side in deli2:hted attention. 

0 

1 zeed a vire o’ Monday night, 

A vire both great and high; 

But I wool not tell you where, my boys. 

Nor wool not tell you why. 

The varmer he come screeching out, 

To zave ’uns new brood mare ; 

Zays I, ‘ You and your stock may roast, 

Vor aught us poor chaps care.’ 

‘ Coorus, boys, coorus !’ 

And the chorus burst out, — 

Then here’s a curse on varmers all, 

As rob and grind the poor ; 

To re’p the fruit of all their works 
In **** for evermoor-r-r-r. 

A blind owld dame come to the vire, 

Zo near as she could get ; 

Zays, ‘Here’s a luck I warn’t asleep, 

To lose this blessed hett. 

They robs us of our turfing rights. 

Our bits of chips and sticks, \ 

Till poor folks now can’t warm their hands, 

Except by varmer’s ricks.’ 

Then, <fec. 

And again the boy’s delicate voice rang out the ferocious 
chorus, with something, Lancelot fancied, of fiendish exultation, 
and every worn face lighted up with a coarse laugh, that indi- 
cated no malice — but also no mercy. 

Lancelot was sickened, and rose to go. 


196 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


As he turned, his arm was seized suddenly and firmly. He 
looked round, and saw a coarse, handsome, showily-dressed girl, 
looking intently into his face. He shook her angrily off. 

‘ You needn’t be so proud, Mr. Smith ; I’ve had my hand on 
the arm of as good as you. Ah, you needn’t start ! I know 
you — I know yon, I say, well enough. You used to be with 
him. Where is he V 

‘ Whom do you mean V 

‘ He !’ answered the girl, with a fierce, surprised look, as if 
there could be no one else in the world. 

‘ Colonel Bracebridge,’ whispered Tregarva. 

* Ay, he it is ! And now walk further ofi‘, bloodhound ! and 
let me speak to Mr. Smith. He is in Norway,’ she ran on 
eagerly. ‘ When will he be back ? When ?’ 

‘ Why do you want to know V asked Lancelot. 

‘ When will he be back V — she kept on fiercely repeating the 
question ; and then burst out, — ‘ Curse you gentlemen all ! 
Cowards ! you are all in a league against us poor girls ! You can 
hunt alone when you betray us, and lie fast enough then ! But 
when we come for justice, you all herd together like a flock of 
rooks ; and turn so delicate and honorable all of a sudden — to 
each other ! When will he be back, I say ?’ 

‘ In a month,’ said Lancelot, who saw that something really 
important lay behind the girl’s wildness. 

‘ Too late !’ she cried, wildly, clapping her hands together ; 
‘ too late ! Here — tell him you saw me ; tell him you saw 
Mary ; tell him where, and in what a pretty place, too, for maid, 
master, or man ! What are you doing here V 

‘ What is that to you, my good girl ?’ 

‘ True. Tell him you saw me here ; and tell him, when next 
he hears of me, it will be in a very different place.’ 

She turned and vanished among the crowd. Lancelot almost 
ran out into the night, — into a triad of fights, two drunken 
men, two jealous wives, and a brute who struck a poor, thin, 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


197 


worn-out woman, for trying to coax him home. Lancelot rush- 
ed up to interfere, but a man seized his uplifted arm. 

‘ He’ll only beat her all the more when he getteth home.’ 

‘ She has stood that every Saturday night for the last seven 
years, to my knowledge,’ said Tregarva ; ‘ and worse, too, at 
times.’ 

‘ Good God ! is there no escape for her from her tyrant V 

‘ No, sir. It’s only you gentlefolks who can afford such luxu- 
ries ; your poor man may be tied to a harlot, or your poor 
woman to a ruffian, but once done, done forever.’ 

‘ Well,’ thought Lancelot, ‘ we English have a characteristic 
way of proving the holiness of the marriage tie. The angel 
of Justice and Pity can not sever it, only the stronger demon 
of Money.’ 

Their way home lay over Ashy Down, a lofty chalk promonto- 
ry, round whose foot the river made a sudden bend. As they 
paced along over the dreary hedgeless stubbles, they both 
started, as a ghostly ‘ Ha ! ha ! ha !’ rang through the air over 
their heads, and was answered by a like cry, faint and distant, 
across the wolds. 

‘That’s those stone- curlews, — at least, so I hope,* said Tre- 
garva. ‘ He’ll be round again in a minute.’ 

And again, right between them and the clear, cold moon, 
‘ Ha ! ha ! ha !’ resounded over their heads. They gazed up 
into the cloudless star-bespangled sky, but there was no sign 
of living thing. 

‘It’s an old sign to me,’ quoth Tregarva; ‘God grant that 
I may remember it in this black day of mine.’ 

‘How so?’ asked Lancelot; ‘ I should not have fancied you 

superstitious man.* 

‘Names go for nothing, sir, and what mv forefathers be- 
lieved in I am not going to be conceited enough to disbelieve 
in a hurry. But if you heard my story you would think I had 
reason enough to remember that devil’s laugh up there.’ 

‘ Let them heai it then.’ 


198 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


‘Well, sir, it may be a long story to you, but it was a short 
one to me, for it was the making of me, out of hand, there and 
then, blessed be God ! But if you will have it ’ 

‘ And I will have it, friend Tregarva,’ quoth Lancelot, light- 
ing his cigar. 

‘ I was about sixteen years old, just after I came home from 
he Brazils ’ 

‘ What ! have you been in the Brazils ?’ 

‘ Indeed and I have, sir, for three years ; and one thing I 
learnt there, at least, that’s worth going for.’ 

‘ What’s that ?’ 

‘ What the Garden of Eden must have been like. But those 
Brazils, under God, were the cause of my being here ; for my 
father, who was a mine captain, lost all his money there, by no 
man’s fault but his own, and not his either, the world would 
say, and when we came back to Cornwall he could not stand 
the bal work, nor I neither. Out of that burning sun, sir, to 
come home here, and work in the levels, up to your knees in 
warm water, with the thermometer at 85'^, and then up a 
thousand feet of ladder to grass, reeking wet with heat, and 
find the easterly sleet driving across those open furz crofts — 
he couldn’t stand it, sir — few stand it long, even of those who 
stay in Cornwall. We miners have a short lease of life ; con- 
sumption and strains break us down before we’re fifty.’ 

‘ But how came you here V 

‘ The doctor told my father, and me too, sir, that we must 
give up mining, or die of decline : so he came up here, to a sis- 
ter of his that was married to the squire’s gardener, and here 
he died ; and the squire, God bless him and forgive him, took 
a fancy to me, and made me under-keeper. And I loved the 
life, for it took me among the woods and the rivers, where I 
could think of the Brazils, and fancy myself back again. But I 
mustn’t talk of that — where God wills is all right. And it is a 
fine life for reading and thinking, a gamekeeper’s, for it’s an 
idle life at best. JS'ow that’s over,’ he added, with a sigh, ‘ and 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


199 


the Lord has fulfilled His words to me, that He spoke the first 
night that ever I heard a stone-plover cry.’ 

* What on earth can you mean ?’ asked Lancelot, deeply in- 
terested. 

‘ Why, sir, it was a wild, whirling, gray night, with the air 
full of sleet and rain, and my father sent me over to Redruth 
town to bring home some trade or other. And as I came back 
I got blinded with the sleet, and I lost my way across the 
moors. You know those Cornish furz-moors, sir ?’ 

‘ No.’ 

‘ Well, then, they are burrowed like a rabbit-warren with old 
mine-shafts. You can’t go in some places ten yards without 
finding great, ghastly, black holes, covered in with furz, and 
weeds, and bits of rotting timber; and when I was a boy I 
couldn’t keep from them. Something seemed to draw me to 
go and peep down, and drop pebbles in, to hear them rattle 
against the sides, fathoms below, till they plumped into the 
ugly black still water at the bottom. And I used to be always 
after them in my dreams, when I was young — falling down 
them, down, down, all night long, till I woke screaming ; for I 
fancied they were hell’s mouth, every one of them. And it 
stands to reason, sir ; we miners hold that the lake of fire can’t 
be far below. For we find it grow warmer and warmer, and 
warmer, the further we sink a shaft ; and the learned gentle- 
men have proved, sir, that it’s not the blasting powder, nor the 
men’s breaths, that heat the mine.’ 

Lancelot could but listen. 

‘ Well, sir, I got into a great furz-croft, full of deads (those 
are the earth-heaps they throw out of the shafts), where no man 
in his senses dare go forward or back in the dark, for fear of 
the shafts ; and the wind and the snow were so sharp, they 
made me quite stupid and sleepy ; and I knew if I stayed there 
I should be frozen to death, and if T w^ent on, there were the 
shafts ready to swallow me up : and what with fear, and the 
howling and raging of the wind, I was like a mazed boy, sir, 


200 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


And I knelt down, and tried to pray ; and then, in one moment^ 
all the evil things I’d ever done, and the bad words and thoughts 
that ever crossed me, rose up together as clear as one page of 
a print-book ; and I knew that if I died that minute I should 
go to hell. And then I saw through the ground all the water 
in the shafts glaring like blood, and all the sides of the shafts 
fierce red-hot, as if hell was coming up. And I heard the 
knockers knocking, or thought I heard them, as plain as I hear 
that grasshopper in the hedge now.’ 

‘ What are the knockers V 

‘ They are the ghosts, the miners hold, of the old Jews, sir, 
that crucified our Lord, and were sent for slaves by the Eoman 
emperors, to work the mines ; and w^e find their old smelting- 
houses, which we call Jews’ houses, and their blocks of tin, at 
the bottom of the great bogs, wliich we call Jews’ tin ; and 
there’s a town among us, too, which we call Market-Jew — but 
the old name was Marazion ; that means, the Bitterness of Zion, 
they tell me. Isn’t it so, sir V 

‘ I believe it is,’ said Lancelot, utterly puzzled in this new field 
of romance. 

‘ And bitter work it was for them, no doubt, poor souls ! Wo 
used to break into the old shafts and adits, which they had 
made, and find old stags’ horn pickaxes, that crumbled to pieces 
when we brought them to grass ; and they say, that if a man 
will listen, sir, of a still night, about those old shafts, he may 
hear the ghosts of them at working, knocking, and picking, as 
clear as if there w’as a man at work in the next level. It may 
be all an old fancy. I suppose it is. But I believed it when I 
was a boy ; and it helped the work in me that night. But I’ll 
go on with my story.’ 

‘ Go on with what you like,’ said Lancelot. 

‘ Well, sir, I was down on my knees among the furz-bushes, 
and I tried to pray ; but I was too frightened, for I felt the 
beast I had been, sir ; and I expected the ground to open and 
let me down every moment ; and then there came by over my 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


201 


head a rushing, and a cry — ‘Ha ! ha ! ha ! Paul !’ it said ; and 
it seemed as if all the devils and witches were out on the wind, 
a-laughing at my miseTy. ‘ Oh, I’ll mend — I’ll repent,’ I said, 
‘ indeed I will ;’ and again it came back, — ‘ Ha 1 ha ! ha ! Paul !’ 
it said. I knew afterward that it was a bird ; but the Lord sent 
it to me for a messenger, no less, that night. And I shook 
like a reed in the water ; and then, all at once, a thought struck 
me. ‘ Why should I be a coward ? Why should I be afraid 
of shafts, or devils, or any thing else ? If I am a miserable sin* 
ner, there’s One died for me — I owe Him love, not fear at all. 
I’ll not be frightened into doing right — that’s a rascally reason 
for repentance. And so it was, sir, that I rose up like a man, 
and said to the Lord Jesus, right out into the black, dumb air, 
— ‘ If you’ll be on my side this night, good Lord, that died for 
me. I’ll be on your side forever, villain as I am, if I’m worth 
making any use of.’ And there and then, sir, I saw a light 
3ome over the bushes, brighter, and brighter, up to me ; and 
there rose up a voice within me, and spoke to me, quite soft and 
sweet, — ‘ Fear not, Paul, for I will send thee far hence unto the 
Gentiles.’ And what more happened I can’t tell, for when I 
woke, I was safe at home. My father and his folk had been 
out with lanterns after me ; and there they found me, sure 
enough, in a dead faint, on the ground. But this I know, sir, 
that those w’ords have never left my mind since, for a day to- 
gether ; and I know that they will be fulfilled in me this tide, 
or never.’ 

Lancelot was silent a few minutes. 

‘ I suppose, Tregarva, that you would call this your conver- 
sion !’ 

‘ I should call it one, sir, because it was one.’ 

‘Tell me now, honestly, did any real, practical change in your 
behavior take place after that night ?’ 

‘ As much, sir, as if you put a soul into a hog, and told him 
that he was a gentleman’s son ; and, if every time he remem- 
bered tha^b he got spirit enough to conquer his hoggishness, 

1 * 


202 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


and behave like a man, till the hoggishness died out of him, 
and the manliness grew up and bore fruit in him, more and more 
each day.’ 

Lancelot half understood him, and sighed. 

A long silence followed, as they paced on past lonely farm- 
yards, from which the rich manure-water was draining across 
the road in foul black streams, festering and steaming in the 
chill night air. Lancelot sighed as he saw the fruitful materi- 
als of food running to waste, and thought of the ‘ over-popula- 
tion’ cry ; and then he looked across to the miles of brown moor- 
land on the opposite side of the valley, that lay idle and dreary 
under the autumn moon, except where here and there a squat- 
ter’s cottage and rood of fi uitful garden gave the lie to the lazi- 
ness and ignorance of man, who pretends that it is not worth 
his while to cultivate the soil which God has given him. ‘ Good 
heavens !’ he thought, ‘ had our forefathers had no more enter- 
prise than modern landlords, where should we all have been at 
this moment? Everywhere waste! Waste of manure, waste 
of land, waste of muscle, waste of brain, waste of population — 
and we call ourselves the workshop of the world 1’ 

As they passed through the miserable hamlet-street of Ashy, 
they saw a light burning in a window. At the door below, a 
haggard womanNwas looking anxiously down the village. 

‘ What’s the matter. Mistress Cooper V asked Tregarva. 

‘ Here’s Mrs. Grane’s poor girl lying sick of the fever — the 
Lord help her I and the boy died of it last week. We sent for 
the doctor this afternoon, and he’s busy with a poor soul that’s 
in her trouble ; and now we’ve sent down to the squire’s, and 
the young ladies, God bless them I sent answer they’d come 
themselves, straightway.’ 

‘ No wonder you have typhus here,’ said Lancelot, ‘ with this 
filthy open drain running right before the door. Why can’t 
you clean it out ?’ 

‘ Why, what harm does that do ?’ answered the woman, pee- 
vishly. ‘Beside, here’s my master gets up to his work by five 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


203 


in the morning, and not back till seven at night, and by then 
he an’t in no humor to clean out gutters. And where’s the 
water to come from to keep a place clean ? It costs many a one 
of us here a shilling a week the summer through, to pay for 
fetching water up the hill. We’ve work enough to fill our ket- 
tles. The muck must just lie in the road, smell or none, till the 
rain carries it away.’ 

Lancelot sighed again. 

‘ It would be a good thing for Ashy, Tregarva, if the weir- 
pool did, some fine morning, run up to Ashy Down, as poor 
Harry Verney said on his death -bed.’ 

‘ There won’t be much of Ashy left by that time, sir, if the 
landlords go on pulling down cottages at their present rate ; 
driving the people into the towns, to herd together there like 
hogs, and walk out to their work four or five miles every 
morning.’ 

‘Why,’ said Lancelot, ‘ wherever one goes one sees commo- 
dious new cottages springing up.’ • 

‘ Wherever you go, sir ; but what of wherever you don’t go ? 
Along the road-sides, and round the gentlemen’s parks, where 
the cottages are in sight, it’s all very smart ; but just go into 
the outlying hamlets — a whited sepulcher, sir, is many a great 
estate ; outwardly swept and garnished, and inwardly full of all 
uncleanliness, and dead men’s bones.’ 

At this moment two cloaked and vailed figures came up to 
the door, followed by a servant. There was no mistaking those 
delicate footsteps, and the two young men drew back with flut- 
tering hearts, and breathed out silent blessings on the minis- 
tering angels, as they entered the crazy and reeking house. 

‘ I’m thinking, sir,’ said Tregarva, as they walked slowly and 
reluctantly away, ‘ that it is hard of the gentlemen to leave all 
God’s work to the ladies, as nine tenths of them do.’ 

‘ And I am thinking, Tregarva, that both for ladies and 
gentlemen, prevention is better than cure.’ 

‘ There’s a great change come over Miss Argemone, sir. She 


204 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


used not to be so ready to start out at midnight to visit dying 
folk. A blessed change !’ 

Lancelot thought so too, and he thought that he knew the 
cause of it. 

Argernone’s appearance, and their late conversation, had 
started a new covey of strange fancies. Lancelot followed them 
over hill and dale, glad to escape a moment from the mournful 
lessons of that evening ; but even over them there was a cloud 
of sadness. Harry Verney’s last words, and Argemone’s ac- 
cidental whisper about ‘ a curse upon the Lavingtons,’ rose to 
his mind. He longed to ask Tregarva, but he was afraid — not 
of the man, for there was a delicacy in his truthfulness which 
encouraged the most utter confidence, but of the subject itself ; 
but curiosity conquered. 

‘What did old Harry mean about the Nun-pool?’ he said, 
at last. ‘Every one seemed to understand him.’ 

‘ Ah, sir, he oughtn’t to have talked of it ! But dying men, 
at times, see over the dark water into deep things, — deeper than 
they think themselves. Perhaps there’s one speaks through 
them. But I thought every one knew the story.’ 

‘ I do not, at least.’ 

‘ Perhaps it’s so much the better, sir.’ 

‘ Why ? I must insist on knowing. It is necessary — prop- 
er, that is — that I should hear every thing that concerns ’ 

‘ 1 understand, sir, so it is ; and I’ll tell you. The story goes, 
that in the old Popish times, when the nuns held Whitford 
Priors, the first Mr. Lavington that ever was came from the 
king with a warrant to turn them all out, poor souls, and take 
the lands for his own. And they say the head lady of them — 
prioress, or abbess, as they called her — withstood him, and 
cursed him, in the name of the Lord, for a hypocrite who rob- 
bed harmless women under the cloak of punishing them for sins 
they’d never committed (for they say, sir, he went up to court, 
and slandered the nuns there for drunkards and worse). And 
she told him, ‘ That the curse of the nuns of Whitford should 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


205 


be on him and his, till they helped the poor in the spirit of the 
nuns of Whitford, and the Nun-pool ran up to Ashy Dowm’ ’ 

‘That time is not come yet,’ said Lancelot. 

‘ But the worst is to come, sir. For he or his, sir, that night, 
said or did something to the lady, that was more than woman’s 
heart could bear ; and the next morning she was found dead 
and cold, drowned in that weir-pool. And there the gentle- 
man’s eldest son was drowned, and more than one Lavington 
beside. Miss Argemone’s only brother, that was the heir, was 
drowned there, too, when he was a little one.’ 

‘ I never heard that she had a brother.’ 

‘ No, sir, no one talks of it. There are many things hap- 
pen in the great house that you must go to the little house 
to hear of. But the country-folks believe, sir, that the nun’s 
curse holds true ; and they say, that Whitford folks have been 
getting poorer and wickeder, ever since that time, and will till 
the Nun-pool runs up to Ashy, and the Lavingtons’ name goes 
out of Whitford Priors.’ 

Lancelot said nothing. A presentiment of evil hung over 
him. He was utterly down-hearted about Tregarva, about Ar- 
gemone, about the poor. The truth was, he could not shake 
off the impression of the scene he had left, utterly disappointed 
and disgusted with the ‘ revel.’ He had expected, as I said 
before, at least to hear something of pastoral sentiment, and of 
genial frolicsome humor ; to see some innocent, simple enjoy- 
ment : but instead, what had he seen but vanity, jealousy, hog- 
gish sensuality, dull vacuity ? drudges struggling for one night 
to forget their drudgery. And yet withal, those songs, and the 
effect which they produced, showed that in these poor creatures, 
too, lay the genius of pathos, taste, melody, soft and noble af- 
fections. ‘ What right have we,’ thought he, ‘ to hinder their 
development ? Art, poetry, music, science, — ay, even those 
athletic and graceful exercises on which we all pride ourselves, 
which we consider necessary to soften and refine ourselves, what 
Hod has given us a monopoly of them ? — what is good for the 


206 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


rich man is good for the poor. Over-education ? And what 
of that ? What if the poor be raised above ‘ their station V 
What right have we to keep them down ? How long have 
they been our born thralls in soul, as well as in body ? What 
right have we to say that they shall know no higher recreation 
than the hogs, because, forsooth, if we raised them, they might 
refuse to work — -for us ? Are we to fix how far their minds 
may be developed ? Has not God fixed it for us, when He 
gave them the same passions, talents, tastes, as our own ? 

Tregarva’s meditations must have been running in a very dif- 
ferent channel, for he suddenly burst out, after long silence, — 

‘It’s a pity these fairs can’t be put down. They do a lot of 
harm : ruin all the young girls round, the Dissenters’ children 
especially, for they run utterly wild ; their parents have no hold 
on them at all.’ 

‘ They tell them that they are the children of the devil,’ said 
Lancelot. ‘ What wonder if the children take them at their 
word, and act accordingly V 

‘The parson here, sir, who is a God-fearing man enough, 
tried hard to put down this one, but the inn-keepers were too 
strong for him.’ 

‘To take away their only amusement, in short. He had 
had much better have set to work to amuse them himself.’ 

‘ His business is to save souls, sir, and not to amuse them. 
T don’t see, sir, what Christian people w^ant wfith such vanities.’ 

Lancelot did not argue the point, for he knew the prejudices 
of Dissenters on the subject; but it did strike him that if Tre- 
garva’s brain had been a little less preponderant, he, too, might 
have found the need of some recreation besides books and 
thought. 

By this time they were at Lancelot’s door. He bid the 
keeper a hearty good night, made him promise to see him next 
day, and went to bed and slept till nearly noon. 

When he walked into his breakfast-room, he found a note on 
the table in his uncle’s handwriting. The vicar’s servant had 


THE VILLAGE REVEL. 


207 


left it an hour before. lie opened it listlessly, rang the bell 
furiously, ordered out his best horse, and, huddling on his 
clothes, galloped to the nearest station, caught the train, and 
arrived at his uncle’s bank — it had stopped payment two hours 
before. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


what's to be done? 

Yes ! the bank had stopped. The ancient firm of Smith, 
Brown, Jones, Robinson, and Co., which had been for some 
years past expanding from a solid golden organism into a cobweb- 
tissue and huge balloon of threadbare paper, had at last worn 
through and collapsed, dropping its car and human contents 
miserably into the Thames mud. Why detail the pitiable post- 
mortem examination resulting ? Lancelot sickened over it for 
many a long day ; not, indeed, mourning at his private losses, 
but, at the thorough hollowness of the system which it exposed, 
about which he spoke his mind pretty freely to his uncle, who 
bore it good-humoredly enough. Indeed, the discussions to 
which it gave rise rather comforted the good man, by turning 
his thoughts from his own losses to general principles. ‘I 
have ruined you, my poor boy,’ he used to say ; ‘ so you may 
as well take your money’s worth out of me in bullying.’ 
Nothing, indeed, could surpass his honest and manly sorrow for 
having been the cause of Lancelot’s beggary ; but as for per- 
suading him that his system was wrong, it was quite impossible. 
Not that Lancelot was hard upon him ; on the contrary, he as- 
sured him, repeatedly, of his conviction, that the precepts of the 
Bible had nothing to do with the laws of commerce ; that 
though the Jews were forbidden to take interest of Jews, Chris- 
tians had a perfect right to be as hard as they liked on ‘ brother’ 
Christians ; that there could not be the least harm in share- 


what’s to be done ? 


209 


jobbing, for thonga it did, to be sure, add nothing to the wealth 
of the community — only conjure money out of your neighbor’s 
l)ocket into your own — ^yet was not that all fair in trade ? If 
a man did not know the real value of the shares he sold you, 
you were not bound to tell him. Again, Lancelot quite agreed 
with his uncle, that though covetousness might be idolatry, yet 
money-making could not be called covetousness ; and that on 
the whole, though making haste to be rich was denounced as a 
dangerous and ruinous temptation in St. Paul’s times, that was 
not the slightest reason why it should be so now. All these 
concessions were made with a freedom which caused the good 
banker to suspect at times that his shrewd nephew was laugh- 
ing at him in his sleeve, but he could not but subscribe to them 
for the sake of consistency ; though, as a stanch Protestant, it 
puzzled him a little at times to find it necessary to justify him- 
self by getting his ‘ infidel’ nephew to explain away so much 
of the Bible for him. But men are accustomed to do that 
nowadays, and so was he. 

Once only did Lancelot break out with his real sentiments 
when the banker was planning how to re-establish his credit ; to 
set to work, in fact, to blow over again the same bubble which 
had already burst under him. 

‘ If I were a Christian,’ said Lancelot, ‘ like you, I would call 
this credit system of yours the devil’s selfish counterfeit of God’s 
order of mutual love and trust; the child of that miserable 
dream, which, as Dr. Chalmers well said, expects universal self- 
ishness to do the work of universal love. Look at your credit 
system, how — not in its abuse, but in its very essence — it car- 
ries the seeds of self-destruction. In the first place, a man’s 
credit depends, not upon his real worth and property, but upon 
his reputation for property ; daily and hourly he is tempted, he 
is forced, to puff himself, to pretend to be richer than he is.’ 

The banker sighed and shrugged his shoulders. ‘ We all do 
it, my dear boy.’ 

‘I know it. You must do it, or be more than human. 


210 


what’s to be done? 


There is lie the first, and look at lie the second. This credit 
system is founded on the universal faith and honor of men 
toward men. But do you think faith and honor can be the 
children of selfishness ? Men must be chivalrous and disinter- 
ested to be honorable. And you expect them all to join in 
universal faith — each for his own selfish interest ! You forget 
that if that is the prime motive, men will be honorable only as 
long as it suits that same self-interest.’ 

The banker shrugged his shoulders again. 

‘ Yes, my dear uncle,’ said Lancelot, ‘ you all forget it, though 
you suffer for it daily and hourly ; though the honorable men 
among you complain of the stain which has fallen on the old 
chivalrous good faith of English commerce, and say that now, 
abroad as well as at home, an Englishman’s word is no longer 
worth other men’s bonds. You see the evil, and you deplore it 
in disgust. Ask yourself honestly, how can you battle against 
it, while you allow in practice, and in theory too, except in 
church on Sundays, the very falsehood from which it all 
springs? — that a man is bound to get wealth, not for his 
country, but for himself ; that, in short, not patriotism, but 
selfishness, is the bond of all society. Selfishness can collect, 
not unite, a herd of cowardly wild cattle, that they may feed 
together, breed together, keep off the wolf and bear together. 
But when one of your wild cattle falls sick, what becomes of the 
corporate feelings of the herd then ? For one man of your class 
who is nobly helped by his fellows, are not the thousand left 
behind to perish ? Your Bible talks of society, not as a herd, 
but as a living tree, an organic individual body, a holy brother- 
hood, and kingdom of God. And here is an idol which you 
have set up instead of it !’ 

But the banker was deaf to all arguments." No doubt he 
had plenty, for he was himself a just, and generous, ay, and a 
God-fearing man in his way, only he regarded Lancelot’s young 
fancies as too visionary to deserve an answer; which they most 
probably are-; else, having been broached as often as they have 


what’s to be done? 


211 


been, they would surely, ere now, have provoked the complete 
refutation which can, no doubt, be given to them by hundreds 
of learned votaries of so-called commerce. And here I beg my 
readers to recollect, that I am in no way answerable for the 
speculations either of Lancelot or any of his acquaintances ; and 
that these papers have been, from beginning to end, as in name 
so in nature. Yeast — an honest sample of the questions which, 
good or bad, are fermenting in the minds of the young of this 
day, and are rapidly leavening the minds of the rising genera- 
tion. No doubt they are all as full of fallacies as possible, 
but as long as the saying of the German sage stands true, 
that ‘ the destiny of any nation, at any given moment, depends 
on the opinions of its young men under five-and-twenty,’ so long 
it must be worth while for those who wish to preserve the 
present order of society to justify its acknowledged evils some- 
what, not only to the few young men who are interested in 
preserving them, but also to the many who are not. 

Though, therefore, I am neither Plymouth Brother, nor 
Communist, and as thoroughly convinced as the newspapers 
can make me that to assert the duties of property is only to 
plot its destruction, and that a community of goods must 
needs imply a community of wives (as every one knows was the 
case with the apostolic Christians), I shall take the liberty of 
narrating Lancelot’s fanatical conduct, without execratory com- 
ment, certain that he will still receive his just reward of con- 
demnation ; and that, if I find facts, a sensible public will hnd 
abhorrence for them. His behavior was, indeed, most sin- 
gular ; he absolutely refused a good commercial situation which 
his uncle procured him. He did not believe in being ‘ cured 
by a hair of the dog that bit him ;’ and he refused also, the 
really generous offers of the. creditors, to allow him a sufficient 
maintenance. ^ 

‘ No,’ he said, ‘ no more pay without work for me. I will 
earn my bread or starve. It seems God’s will to teach me 
what poverty is — will see that His intention is not left half- 


212 


what’s to be done? 


fulfilled. I have sinned, and only in the stern delight of a just 
penance can I gain self-respect.’ 

‘But, my dear madman,’ said his uncle, ‘you are just the 
innocent one among us all. You, at least, were only a sleep- 
ing partner.’ 

‘And therein lies my sin; I took money which I never 
earned, and cared as little how it was gained as how I spent 
it. Henceforth I shall touch no farthing which is the fruit of 
a system which I can not approve. I accuse no one. Ac- 
tions may vary in rightfulness, according to the age and the 
person. But what may be right for you, because you think 
it right, is surely wTong for me, because I think it wrong.’ 

So, with grim determination, he sent to the hammer every 
article he possessed, till he had literally nothing left but the 
clothes in which he stood. ‘ He could not rest,’ he said, ‘ till 
he had pulled out all his borrowed peacock’s feathers. When 
they were gone he should be able to see, at last, whether he 
was jackdaw or eagle.’ And wonder not, reader, at this same 
strength of will. The very genius, which too often makes its 
possessor self-indulgent in common matters, from the intense 
capability of enjoyment which it brings, may also, when once 
his whole being is stirred into motion by some great object, 
transform him into a hero. 

And he carried a letter, too, in his bosom, night and day, 
which routed all coward fears and sad forebodings as soon as 
they arose, and converted the lonely and squalid lodging to 
which he had retired, into a fairy palace peopled with bright 
phantoms of future bliss. I need not say from whom it came. 

‘ Beloved !’ (it ran) ‘ Darling ! you need not pain yourself to 
tell me any thing. I know all ; and I know, too (do not ask me 
how), your noble determination to drink the wholesome cup of 
poverty to the very dregs. 

‘ Oh that I were with you ! Oh that I could give you my 
fortune ! but that is not yet, alas ! in my own power. No . 
rather would I share that poverty with you. and strengthen you 


what’s to bet done? 


213 


in your purpose. And yet, I can not bear the thought of you, 
lonely — perhaps miserable. But, courage ! though you have 
lost all, you have found me ; and now you are knitting rne to 
yon forever — justifying my own love to me by your noble- 
ness ; and am I not worth all the world to you ? I dare say this 
to you ; you will not think me conceited. . Can we misunder- 
stand each other’s hearts ? And all this while you are alone ! 
Oh ! I have mourned for you ! Since I heard of your misfor- 
tune have not tasted pleasure. The light of heaven has been 
black to me, and I have lived only upon love. I will not taste 
comfort while you are wretched. Would that I could be poor 
like you ! Every night upon the bare floor I lie down to sleep, 
and fancy you in your little chamber, and nestle to you, and 
cover that dear face with kisses. Strange ! that I should speak 
thus to you, whom a few months ago I had never heard of! 
Wonderful simplicity of love 1 How all that is prudish and 
artificial flees before it. I seem to have begun a new life. If 
I could play now, it would be only with little children. Fare- 
well, be great — a glorious future is before you, and me in 
you!’ 

Lancelot’s answer must remain untold ; perhaps the vail has 
been already too far lifted which hides the sanctuary of such 
love. But, alas 1 to his letter no second had been returned ; 
and he felt — though he dared not confess it to himself — a 
gloomy presentiment of evil flit across him, as he thought of 
his fallen fortunes, and the altered light in which his suit would 
be regarded by Argemone’s parents. Once he blamed himself 
bitterly for not having gone to Mr. Lavington the moment he 
discovered Argemone’s affection, and insuring — as he then 
might have done — his consent. But again he felt that no 
sloth had kept him back, but adoring reverence for his God- 
given treasure, and humble astonishment at his own happiness ; 
and Le fled from the thought into renewed examination into the 
state of the masses, the effect of which was only to deepen hia 
own determination to share their lot. 


214 


what’s to be bone? 


But at the same time, it seemed to him but fair to live, as 
long as it would last, on that part of his capita* which his credi- 
tors would have given nothing for — namely, his information ; 
and he set to work to write. But, alas ! he had but a ‘ small 
literary connection and the entree of the initiated ring is not 

obtained in a day Besides, he would not write trash. — 

He was in far too grim a humor for that ; and if he wrote on 
important subjects, able editors always were in the habit of in- 
trusting them to old contributorsj — men in short, in whose 
judgment they had confidence — not to say any thing which 
would commit the magazine to any thing but its own little 
party-theory. And behold ! poor Lancelot found himself of no 
party whatsoever. He was in a minority of one against the 
whole world, on all points, right or wrong. He had the un- 
bappiest knack (as all geniuses have) of seeing connections, hu- 
morous or awful, between the most seemingly antipodal things ; 
of illustrating every subject from three or four different spheres 
which it is an anathema to mention in the same page. If he 
wrote a physical-science article, able editors asked him what the 
deuce a scrap of high-churchism did in the middle of it ? If 
he took the same article to a high-church magazine, the editor 
could not commit himself to any theory which made the earth 
more than six thousand years old, and was afraid that the pub- 
lic taste would not approve of the allusions to free-masonry and 

Soyer’s soup And worse than that, one and all — Jew, 

Turk, infidel, and heretic, as well as the orthodox — ^joined in 
pious horror at his irreverence; — the shocking way he had of 
jumbling religion and politics — the human and the divine — the 

theories of the pulpit with the facts of the exchange 

The very atheists, who laughed at him for believing in a god, 
agreed that that, at least, was inconsistent with the dignity of 

the God— who did not exist It was Syncretism 

Pantheism 

‘Very well, friends,’ quoth Lancelot to himself, in bitter rage, 
one day, ‘ if you choose to be without God in the world, and to 


what’s to be done ? 


215 


honor Him, by denying Him .... do so You shall have 
your way : and go to the place whither it seems leading you 

just now, at railroad pace. But I must live Well, 

at least, there is some old college nonsense of mine, written 
three years ago, when I believed, like you, that all heaven and 
earth was put together out of separate bits, like a child’s puzzle, 
and that each topic ought to have its private little pigeon-hole 
all to itself in a man’s brain, like drugs in a chemist’s shop. 
Perhaps it will suit you, friends ; perhaps it will be system- 
frozen, and narrow, and dogmatic, and cowardly, and godless 
enough for you.’ .... 

So he went forth with them to market ; and behold 1 they 
were bought forthwith. There was verily a demand for such ; 
. . . . and in spite of the ten thousand ink-fountains which 
were daily pouring out similar Stygian liquors, the public thirst 
remained unslaked. ‘Well,’ thought Lancelot, ‘the negro race 
is not the only one which is afflicted with manias for eating 
dirt By-the-by, where is poor Luke V 

Ah ! — where was poor Luke ? Lancelot had received from 
him one short hurried note, blotted with tears, which told how 
he had informed his father ; and how his father had refused to 
see him, and had forbid him the house ; and how he had offer- 
ed him an allowance of fifty pounds a year (it should have been 
five hundred, he said, if he had possessed it), which Luke’s di- 
rector, sensibly enough, had compelled him to accept 

And there the letter ended, abruptly, leaving the writer evidently 
in lower depths than he had either experienced already, or ex- 
pected at all. 

Lancelot had often pleaded for him with his father ; but in 
vain. Not that the good man was hard-hearted : he would cry 
like a child about it all to Lancelot when they sat together after 
dinner. But he was utterly beside himself, what with grief, 
shame, terror, and astonishment. On the whole, the sorrow 
was a real comfort to him : it gave him something beside his 
bankruptcy to think of; and, distracted between the two differ- 


21G 


what’s to be done ? 


ent griefs, he could brood over neither. But of the two, cer- 
tainly his son’s conversion was the worst in his eyes. The bank- 
ruptcy was intelligible — measurable ; — it was something known 
and classified — part of the ills which flesh (or, at least, com- 
mercial flesh) is heir to. But going to Rome ! — 

‘ I can’t understand it. I won’t believe it. It’s so foolish, you 
see, Lancelot — so foolish — like an ass that eats thistles ! . . . 
There must be some reason ; — there must be — something we 
don’t know, sir ! Do you think they could have promised to 
make him a cardinal V 

Lancelot quite agreed that there were reasons for it, that 

they — or, at least, the banker — did not know 

‘ Depend upon it, they promised him something — some prince- 
bishopric, perhaps. Else why on earth could a man go over ? 
It’s out of the course of nature !’ 

Lancelot tried in vain to make him understand that a man 
might sacrifice every thing to conscience, and actually give up 
all worldly weal for what he thought right. The banker turn- 
ed on him with angry resignation — 

‘Very well — I suppose he’s done right, then! I suppose 
you’ll go next ! Take up a false religion, and give up every 
thing for it 1 Why then, he must be honest ; and if he’s hon- 
est, he’s in the right ; and I suppose I’d better go, too 1’ 

Lancelot argued ; but in vain. The idea of disinterested 
sacrifice was so utterly foreign to the good man’s own creed 
and practice, that he could but see one pair of alternatives. 

‘ Either he is a good man, or he’s a hypocrite. Either he’s 
right, or he’s gone over for some vile selfish end ; and what can 
that be but money ?’ 

Lancelot gently hinted that there might be other selfish ends 
besides pecuniary ones — saving one’s soul, for instance. 

‘ Why, if he wants to save his soul, he’s right. What ought 
we all to do, but try to save our souls ? I tell you there's some 
sinister reason. They’ve told him that they expect to convert 
EnHand — I should like to see them do it !— and that he’ll be 

c> 


what’s to be done? 


217 


made a bishop. Don’t argue with me, or you’ll drive me mad. 
I know those Jesuits !’ 

And as soon as he began upon the Jesuits, Lancelot prudently 
held his tongue. The good man had worked himself up into a 
perfect frenzy of terror and suspicion about them. He suspect- 
ed concealed Jesuits among his footmen, and liis housemaids ; 
Jesuits in his counting-house, Jesuits in his duns 

‘ Hang it, sir ! how do I know that there aint a Jesuit listen- 
ing to us behind the curtain ?’ 

‘ I’ll go and look,’ quoth Lancelot, and suited the action to 
the word. 

‘Well, if there aint, there might be. They’re everywhere, 
1 tell you. That vicar of Whitford was a Jesuit. I was sure 
of it all along ; but the man seemed so pious ; and certainly he 
did my poor dear boy a deal of good. But he ruined you, you 
know. And I’m convinced — no, don’t contradict me, I tell you, 
I won’t stand it — I^m convinced that this whole mess of mine 
is a plot of those rascals ; — I’m as certain of it as if they’d told 
me !’ 

‘ For what end ?’ 

‘ How the deuce can I tell ? Am I a Jesuit, to understand 
their sneaking, underhand — pah! I’m sick of life^ Nothing 
but rogues, wherever one turns 1’ 

And then Lancelot used to try to persuade him to take poor 
Luke back again. But vague terror had steeled his heart. 

‘ What ? Why, he’d convert us all 1 He’d convert his sis- 
ters I He’d bring his priests in here, or his nuns disguised as 
lady’s-maids, and we should all go over, every one of us, like a 
set of nine-pins I’ 

j ‘You seem to think Protestantism a rather shaky cause, if it 
is so easy to be upset.’ 

1 ‘ Sir ! Protestantism is the cause of England and Christianity, 

I and civilization, and freedom, and common sense, sir 1 and that’s 
the very reason why it’s so easy to pervert men from it ; and 
the very reason why it’s a lost cause, and popery, and Anti- 

K 


218 


what’s to be done? 


Christ, and the gates of hell, are coming in like a flood to pre^ 
vail against it !’ 

‘Well,’ thought Lancelot, ‘that is the very strangest reason 
for its being a lost cause ! Perhaps if my poor uncle believed 
it really to be the cause of God Himself, he would not be in 
such extreme fear for it, or fancy it required such a hot-bed and 

green-house culture Ileally, if his sisters were little girls 

of ten years old, who looked up to him as an oracle, there would 

be some reason in it But those tall, ball-going, flirting, 

self-satisfied cousins of mine — who would have been glad enough, 
either of them, two months ago, to snap up me, infidelity, bad 
character, and all, as a charming rich young rou ^ — if they have 
not learnt enough Protestantism in the last five-and-twenty 
years to take care of themselves, Protestantism must have very 
few allurements, or else be very badly carried out in practice by 

those who talk loudest in favor of it I heard them 

praising O’Blareaway’s ‘ministry,’ by-the-by, the other day. 
So he is up in town, at last — at the summit of his ambition. 
Well, he may suit them. I wonder how many young creatures 
like Argemone and Luke he would keep from Popery !’ 

But there was no use arguing with a man in such a state of 
mind ; and gradually Lancelot gave it up, in hopes that time 
would bring the good man to his sane wits again, and that a 
father’s feelings would prove themselves stronger, because more 
divine, than a so-called Protestant’s fears, though that would 
have been, in the banker’s eyes, and in the Jesuit’s also — so do 
extremes meet — the very reason for expecting them to be the 
weaker : for it is the rule with all bigots, that the right cause is 
always a lost cause, and therefore requires — God’s weapons of 
love, truth, and reason being well known to be too weak — to be 
defended, if it is to be saved, with the devil’s weapons of bad 
logic, spite, and calumny. 

At last, in despair of obtaining tidings of his cousin by any 
other method, Lancelot made up his mind to apply to a certain 


what’s to EE DONE? 


219 


I 


remarkable man whose ‘ conversion’ had preceded Luke’s about 
a year, and had, indeed, mainly caused it. 

He went, .... and was not disappointed. With the most 
winning courtesy and sweetness, his story and his request were 
patiently listened to. 

‘ The outcome of your speech, then, my dear sir, as I appre- 
bend it, is a request to me to send back the fugitive lamb into 
the jaws of the well-meaning, but still lupine wolf?’ 

This was spoken with so sweet and arch a smile, that it was 
impossible to be angry. 

‘On my hono*’ I have no wish to convert him. All I want 
is to have human speech of him — to hear from his own lips that 
he is content. Whither should I convert him ? Not to my 
own platform — for I am nowhere. Not to that which he has 
leH, . . . . for if he could have found standing ground there, he 
would not have gone elsewhere for rest.’ 

‘ Therefore they went out from you, because they were not of 
you,’ said the ‘ Father,’ half aside. 

‘ Most true, sir. I have felt long that argument was bootless 
with those whose root-ideas of Deity, man, earth, and heaven, 
were as utterly different from my own, as if we had been crea- 
ted by two different beings.’ 

‘ Do you include in that catalogue those ideas of truth, love, 
and justice, which are Deity itself? Have you no common 
ground in them ?’ 

‘ You are an elder and a better man than 1. ... It would be 
insolent in me to answer that question, except in one way, . . . 
and’ 

‘ In that you can not answer it. Be it so. . . . You shall see 
your cousin. You may make what efforts you will for his re- 
convei’sion. The Catholic Church,’ continued he, with one of 
his arch, deep-meaning smiles, ‘ is not, like popular Protestant- 
ism, driven into shrieking terror at the approach of a foe. She 
has too much faith iu herself, and in Him who gives to her the 


220 


what’s to be done ? 


power of truth, to expect every gay meadow to allure away hei 
lambs from the fold.’ 

‘ I assure you that your gallant permission is unnecessary. 
I am beginning, at least, to believe that there is a Father in 
Heaven, who educates his children ; and I have no wish to in- 
terfere with his methods. Let my cousin go his way .... he 
will learn something which he wanted, I doubt not, on his 
present path, even as I shall on mine. ‘Setu segui la tua 
Stella’ is ray motto. . . . Let it be his, too, wherever the star 
may guide him. If it be a will-o’-the wisp, and lead to the 
morass, he will only learn to avoid morasses the better for the 
future.’ 

‘ Ave Maris stella ! It is the star of Bethlehem which he 
follows .... the star of Mary, immaculate, all-loving !’.... 
And he bowed his head reverently. ‘ Would that you, too, 
would submit yourself to that guidance ! . . . .You, too, would 
seem to want some loving heart, whereon to rest.’. . . . 

Lancelot sighed. ‘ I am not a child, but a man ; I want not 
a mother to pet, but a man to rule me.’ 

Slowly his companion raised his thin hand, and pointed to 
the crucifix, which stood at the other end of the apartment. 

‘ Behold him !’ and he bowed his head once more .... and 
Lancelot, he knew not why, did the same .... and yet in an 
instant he threw his head up proudly, and answered with George 
Fox’s old reply to the Puritans, — 

‘ I want a live Christ, not a dead one That is noble, 

.... beautiful .... it may be true. . . . But it has no mes- 
sage for me.’ 

‘ He died for you.’ 

‘I care for the world, and not myself.’ 

‘ He died for the world.’ 

‘ And has deserted it, as folks say now, and become — an ab- 
sentee, performing his work by deputies. . . .Do not 'start; the 
blasphemy is not mine, but those who preach it. No wonder 
Uiat the owners of the soil think it no shame to desert their es 


what’s to be done? 


221 


tates, when preachers tell them that He to whom they say, all 
power is given in heaven and earth, has deserted his.’ 

‘ What would you have, my dear sir ?’ asked the father. 

‘ What the Jews had. A king of my nation, and of the 
hearts of my nation, who would teach soldiers, artists, craftsmen, 
statesmen, poets, priests, — if priests there must be. I want a hu- 
man lord, who understands me and the millions round me, pities 
us, teaches us, orders our history, civilization, development for us. 
1 come to you, full of manhood, and you send me to — a woman. 
I go to the Protestants, fulF of desires to right the world — and 
they begin to talk of the next life, and give up this as lost !’ 

A quiet smile lighted up the thin, wan face, full of unfathom- 
able thoughts ; and he replied, again half to himself, 

‘ Am I God, to kill or to make alive, that thou sendest to 
me to recover a man of his leprosy ? Farewell. You shall 
see your cousin here at noon to-morrow. You will not refuse 
my blessing, or my prayers, even though they be offered to a 
mother ?’ 

‘ I will refuse nothing in the form of human love.’ And the 
father blessed him fervently, and he went out. . . . 

‘ What a man !’ said he to himself, ‘ or rather the wreck of 
what a man ! Oh, for such a heart, with the thews and sinews 
of a truly English brain !’ 

Next day, he met Luke in that room. Their talk was short 
and sad. Luke was on the point of entering an order devoted 
especially to the worship of the Blessed Virgin. 

‘ My father has cast me out .... I must go to hei feet. 
She will have mercy, though man has none.’ 

‘ But why enter the order ? Why take an irrevocable step ?’ 

‘ Because it is irrevocable ; because I shall enter an utterly 
new life, in which old things shall pass away, and all things 
become new, and I shall forget the very names of Parent, 
Englishman, Citizen, — the very existence of that strange Babel 
of man’s building, whose roar and moan oppresses me every 
time I walk the street. Oh, for solitude, meditation, penance \ 


222 


what’s to be done? 


Oh, to make up by bitter self-punishment my ingratitude to 
her who has been leading me unseen for years, home to hei 
bosom ! — The all-prevailing mother, daughter of Gabriel, spouse 
of Deity, flower of the earth, whom I have so long despised ! 
(-)h, to follow the example of the blessed Mary of Oignies, who 
every day inflicted on her most holy person eleven hundred 
stripes in honor of that all-perfect maiden 1’ 

‘ Such an honor, I could have thought, would have pleased 
better Kali, the murder-goddess of the Thugs,’ thought Lance- 
lot to himself ; but he had not the heart to say it, and he only 
replied, 

‘ So torture propitiates the Virgin ? That explains the 
strange story I read lately, of her having appeared in the 
Cevennes, and informed the peasantry that she had sent the 
potato disease on account of their neglecting her shrines ; that 
unless they repented, she would next year destroy their cattle ; 
and the third year themselves.’ 

‘ Why not V asked poor Luke. 

‘ Why not, indeed ? If God is to be capricious, proud, re- 
vengeful, why not the Son of God ? And if the Son of God, 
why not his mother ?’ 

‘ You judge spiritual feelings by the carnal test of the under- 
standing ; your Protestant horror of asceticism lies at the root 
of all you say. How can you comprehend the self-satisfaction, 
the absolute delight, of self-punishment ?’ 

‘ So far from it, I have always had an infinite respect for 
asceticism, as a noble and manful thing — the only manful thing 
to my eyes left in popery ; and fast dying out of that, under 
Jesuit influence. You recollect the quarrel between the Tablet 
and the Jesuits, over Faber’s unlucky honesty about St. Rose 
of Lima ? . . . . But, really, as long as you honor asceticism 
as a means of appeasing the angry deities, I shall prefer to St. 
Dominic’s cuirass or St. Hedwiga’s chilblains, John Mytton’s 
two hours’ crawl on the ice in his shirt, after a flock of wild 
ducks. They both endured like heroes ; but the former for a 


what’s to be done ? 


223 


Belfisb, if not a blasphemous end ; the latter as a man should, 
to test and strengthen his own powers of endurance . . . . 
There, I will say no more. Go your way, in God’s name. 
There must be lessons to be learnt in all strong and self-restrain- 
ing action .... So you will learn something from the scourge 
and the hair-shirt. We must all take the bitter medicine of 
suffering, I suppose.’ 

‘ And, therefore, I am the wiser, in forcing the draught on 
myself.’ 

‘ Provided it be the right draught, and do not require 
another and still bitterer one to expel the effects of the poison. 
I have no faith in people’s doctoring themselves, either physi- 
cally or spiritually.’ 

‘ I am not my own physician ; I follow the rules of an 
infallible Church, and the examples of her canonized saints.’ 

‘ Well .... perhaps they may have known what was best 
for themselves .... But as for you and me here, in the year 
1849 .... However, we shall argue on forever. Forgive me 
if I have offended you.’ 

‘ I am not offended. The Catholic Church has always been 
a persecuted one.’ 

‘ Then walk with me a little way, and I will persecute you 
no more.’ 

‘ Where are you going ?’ 

‘To ... . To’ Lancelot had not the heart to say whither. 

‘ To my father’s ! Ah ! what a son I would have been to 
him now, in his extreme need ! . . . . And he will not let me ! 
Lancelot, is it impossible to move him ? I do not want to go 
home again .... to live there .... I could not face that, 
though I longed but this moment to do it. I can not face the 
self-satisfied, pitying looks .... the everlasting suspicion that 
they suspect me to be speaking untruths, or proselytizing in se- 
cret .... Cruel and unjust !’.... 

Lancelot thought of a certain letter of Luke’s .... but who 
was he, to break the bruised reed ? 


224 


what’s to be done? 


‘ No ; I will not see him. Better thus ; better vanish, and 
be known only according to the spirit, by the spirits of saints 
and confessors, and their successors upon earth. No ! I will 
die, and give no sign.’ 

‘ I must see somewhat more of you, indeed.’ 

‘ I will meet you here, then, two hours hence. Near that 
}ouse — even along the way which leads to it — I can not go. It 
vould be too painful : too painful to think that you were walk- 
ing toward it, — the old house where I was born and bred . . . . 
and I shut out, — even though it be for the sake of the kingdom 
of heaven !’ 

‘ Or for the sake of your own share therein, my poor cousin !’ 
thought Lancelot to himself, ‘ which is a very different matter.’ 

‘Whither, after you have been ?’ Luke could not get 

out the world home. 

‘ To Claude Mellot’s.’ 

‘ I will walk part of the way thither with you. But he is a 
very bad companion for you.’ 

‘ I can’t help that. I can not live ; and I am going to turn 
painter. It is not the road in which to find a fortune ; but still, 
the very sign-painters live somehow, I suppose. I am going 
this very afternoon to Claude Mellot, and enlist. I sold the last 
of my treasured MSS. to a fifth-rate magazine this morning, for 
what it would fetch. It has been like eating one’s own children 
• — but, at least, they have fed me. So now ‘ to fresh fields and 
pastures new.’ 


CHAPTEE XV. 


DEUS E MACHINA. 

When Lancelot reached the banker’s a letter was put into 
liis hand ; it bore the Whitford post-mark, and Mrs. Lavington’s 
bandwriting. He tore it open ; it contained a letter from Arge- 
mone, which, it is needless to say, he read before her mother’s : — 

‘My beloved! my husband! — Yes — though you may fancy 
me fickle and proud — I will call you so to the last ; for, were I 
fickle, I could have saved myself the agony of writing this ; 
and, as for pride, oh ! how that darling vice has been crushed 
out of me ! I have rolled at my mother’s feet with bitter tears, 
and vain entreaties-7-and been refused ; and yet I have obeyed 
her after all. We must write to each other no more. This 
one last letter must explain the forced silence which has been 
driving me mad with fears that you would suspect me. And now 
you may call me weak ; but it is your love which has made me 
strong to do this — which has taught me to see with new inten- 
sity my duty, not only to you, but to every human being — to 
my parents. By this self-sacrifice alone can I atone to them 
for all my past un dutifulness. Let me, then, thus be worthy 
of you. Hope that by this submission we may win even her 
to change. How calmly I write ! but it is only my hand that 
is calm. As for my heart, read Tennyson’s Fatima, and then 
know how I feel toward you! Yes, I love you — madly, the 
world would say. I seem to understand now how women have 


226 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


died of love. Ay, that, indeed, would be blessed ; for then my 
spirit would seek out yours, and hover ov'er it forever ! Fare- 
w^ell, beloved ! and let me hear of you through your deeds. A 
feeling at my heart, which should not be, although it is, a sad 
one, tells me that we shall meet soon — soon.’ 

Stupefied and sickened, Lancelot turned carelessly to Mrs. 
Lavington’s cover, whose blameless respectability thus uttered 
itself : — 


‘ I can not deceive you or myself by saying I regret that 
providential circumstances should have been permitted to break 
oflf a connection which I always felt to be most unsuitable ; and 
I rejoice that the intercourse my dear child has had with you 
has not so far undermined her principles as to prevent her yield- 
ing the most filial obedience to my wishes on the point of her^ 
future correspondence with you. Hoping that all that has oc- 
curred will be truly blessed to you, and lead your thoughts to 
another world, and to a true concern for the safety of your im- 
mortal soul, 

‘ I remain, yours truly, 

C. Lavington.’ 

‘ Another world !’ said Lancelot to himself. ‘ It is most mer- 
ciful of you, certainly, my dear madam, to put one in mind of 
the existence of another world, while such as you have their 
own way in this one !’ and, thrusting the latter epistle into the 
fire, he tried to collect his thoughts. 

What had he lost ! The ofteuer he asked himself, the less 
he found to unman him. Argemone’s letters were so new a 
w’ant, that the craving for them was not yet established. His 
intense imagination, resting on the delicious certainty of her 
faith, seemed ready to fill the silence with bright hopes and 
noble purposes. She herself had said that he would see her 
soon. But yet — but yet-— why did that allusion to death strike 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


221 


chilly through him ? They were hut aoi ds, — a melancholy 
fancy, such as women love at times to play with. He would 
toss it from him. At least here was another reason for bestir- 
fing himself at once to win fame in the noble profession he had 
chosen. And yet his brain reeled as he went iip-stairs to his 
uncle’s private room. 

There, however, he found a person closeted with the banker, 
whose remarkable appearance drove every thing else out of his 
mind. He was a huge, shaggy, toil-worn man, the deep mel- 
ancholy earnestness of whose rugged features reminded him 
almost ludicrously of one of Landseer’s bloodhounds. But 
withal, there was a tenderness. — a genial, though covert humor, 
playing about his massive features, which awakened in Lancelot 
at first sight a fantastic longing to open his whole heart to him. 
He was dressed like a foreigner, but -spoke English with perfect 
fluency. The banker sat listening, quite crest-fallen, beneath 
his intense and melancholy gaze, in which, nevertheless, there 
twinkled some rays of kindly sympathy. 

‘ It was all those foreign railways,’ said Mr. Smith, pensively. 

‘ And it serves you quite right,’ answered the stranger. ‘ Did 
not 1 warn you of the folly and sin of sinking capital in foreign 
countries while English land was crying out for tillage, and 
English poor for employment V 

‘ My dear friend’ (in a deprecatory tone), ‘ it was the best 
possible investment I could make.’ 

‘ And pray, who told you that you were sent into the world 
to make investments V 
‘ But ’ 

‘ But me no huts, or I won’t stir a finger toward helping 
you. What are you going to do with this money if I procure 
it for you ?’ 

‘ Work till I can pay back that poor fellow’s fortune,’ said 
the banker, earnestly pointing to Lancelot. ‘ And if I could 
clear my conscience of that, I would not care if I starved my- 
self, hardly if my own children did.’ 


228 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


‘ Spoken like a man !’ answered the stranger ; work for that, 
and I’ll help you. Be a new man, once and for all, my friend. 
Don’t even make this younker your first object. Say to your* 
self, not ‘ I will invest this money where it shall pay me most, 
but I will invest it where it shall give most employment to 
English hands, and produce most manufactures for English 
bodies.’ In short, seek first the kingdom of God and His 
justice with this money of yours, and see if all other things, 
profits and suchlike included, are not added unto you.’ 

‘ And are you certain you can obtain the money V 

‘ My good friend the Begum of the Cannibal Islands has 
more than she knows what to do with ; and she owes me a 
good turn, you know.’ 

‘ What are you jesting about now V 

‘ Did I never tell you ? The new king of the Cannibal 
Islands, just like your European ones, ran away, and would 
neither govern himself nor let any one else govern ; so one 
morning his ministers, getting impatient, ate him, and then 
asked my advice. I recommended them to put his mother on 
the throne, who, being old and tough, would run less danger; 
and since then, every thing has gone on as smoothly as any- 
where else.’ 

‘ Are you mad V thought Lancelot to himself as he stared 
at the speaker’s matter-of-fact face. 

‘ No, I am not mad, my young friend,’ quoth he, facing right 
round upon him, as if he had divined his thoughts. 

‘ I — I beg your pardon, I did not speak,’ stammered Lance- 
lot, abashed at a pair of eyes which could have looked down 
the boldest mesmerist in three seconds. 

‘ I am perfectly well aware that you did not. I must have 
ome talk with you : I’ve heard a good deal about you. You 

wrote those articles in the Review about George Sand, 

did you not?’ 

^ I did.’ 

* Well, there was a great deal of noble feeling in them, and 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


229 


a great deal of abominable nonsense. You seem to be very 
anxious to reform society V 

‘lam.’ 

‘Don’t you think you had better begin by reforming your- 
self?’ 

‘ Ileally, sir,’ answered Lancelot, ‘ I am too old for that worn- 
out quibble. The root of all my sins has been selfishness and 
sloth. Am I to cure them by becoming still more selfish and 
slothful ? What part of myself can I reform except my actions ? 
and the very sin of my actions has been, as I take it, that I’ve 
been doing nothing to reform others ; never fighting against 
the world, the flesh, and the devil, as your prayer-book has it.’ 

‘ My prayer-book ?’ asked the stranger, with a quaint smile. 

‘ Upon my word, Lancelot,’ interposed the banker, with a 
frightened look, ‘ you must not get into an argument : you 
must be more respectful : you don’t know to whom you are 
speaking.’ 

‘ And I don’t much care,’ answered he. ‘ Life is really too 
grim earnest in these days to stand on ceremony. I am sick 
of blind leaders of the blind, of respectable preachers to the re- 
spectable, who drawl out second-hand trivialities, which they 
neither practice nor wish to see practiced. I’ve had enough all 
my life of Scribes and Pharisees in white cravats, laying on men 
heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne, and then not touch- 
ins: them themselves with one of their fingers.’ 

‘ Silence, sir !’ roared the banker, while the stranger threw 
himself into a chair, and burst into a storm of laughter. 

‘ Upon my word, friend Mammon, here’s another of Hans 
Andersen’s ugly ducks !’ 

‘ I really do not mean to be rude,’ said Lancelot, recollecting 
himself, ‘ but I am nearly desperate. If your heart is in the 
right place, you will understand me ; if not, the less we talk to 
each other the better.’ 

‘ Most true,’ answered the stranger ; ‘ and I do understand 
you ; and if, as I hope, we see more of each other henceforth, 


230 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


we will see if we can not solve one or two of these problems 
between us.’ 

At this moment Lancelot was summoned down stairs, and 
found, to his great pleasure, Tregarva waiting for him. That 
worthy personage bowed to Lancelot reverently and distantly. 

‘ I am quite ashamed to intrude myself upon you, sir, but 1 
could not rest without coming to ask whether you have had 
any news.’ — He broke down at this point in the sentence, but 
Lancelot understood him. 

‘ I have no news,’ he said. ‘ But what do you mean by 
standing off in that way, as if we were not old and fast friends? 
Kemember, I am as poor as you are now ; you may look me in 
the face and call me your equal, if you will, or your inferior, T 
shall not deny it.’ 

‘ Pardon me, sir,’ answered Tregarva ; ‘ but I never felt what a 
real, substantial thing ranU is, as I have, since this sad misfor- 
tune of yours.’ 

‘ And I have never, till now, found out its worthlessness.’ 

‘ You’re wrong, sir, you are wrong ; look at the difference be- 
tween yourself and me. When you’ve lost all you have, and 
seven times more, you’re still a gentleman. No man can take 
that from you. You may look the proudest duchess in the land 
in the tace, and claim her as your equal ; while I, sir, — I don’t 
mean though to talk of myself — but suppose that you had loved 
a pious and a beautiful lady, and among all your worship of 
her, and your awe of her, had felt that you were worthy of her, 
that you could become her comforter, and her pride, and her 
joy, if it was not for that accursed gulf that men had put be- 
tween you, that you were no gentleman ; that you didn’t know 
how to walk, and how to pronounce, and when to speak and 
when to be silent, not even how to handle your own knife and 
fork without disgusting her, or how to keep your own body 
clean and sweet Ah, sir, I see it now as I never did be- 

fore, what a wall all these little defects build up round a poor 
man ; how he longs and stiuggles to show himself as he is at 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


231 


heart, and can not, till he feels sometimes as if he was enchanted, 
pent up, like folks in fairy tales, in the body of some dumb 
beast. But, sir,’ he went on, with a concentrated bitterness 
which Lancelot had never seen in him before, ‘just because this 
gulf which rank makes is such a deep one, therefore it looks to 
me all the more devilish : not that I want to pull down any 
man to my level ; I despise my own level too much; I want to 
rise ; I want those like me to rise with me. Let the rich be as 
rich as they will. — I, and those like me, covet not money, but 
manners. Why should not the workman be a gentleman, and 
a workman still ? Why are they to be shut out from all that is 
beautiful, and delicate, and winning, and stately V 

‘Now, perhaps,’ said Lancelot, ‘you begin to understand, 
what I was driving at on that night of the revel V 

‘ It has come home to me lately, sir, bitterly enough. If you 
knew what had gone on in me this last fortnight, you would 
know that I had cause to curse the state of things which brings 
a man up a savage against his will, and cuts him off, as if he 
were an ape or a monster, from those for whom the same Lord 
died, and on whom the same spirit rests. Is that God’s will, 
sir ? No, it is the devil’s will. ‘ Those whom God hath joined, 
let no man put asunder.’ ’ 

Lancelot colored, for he remembered with how much less 
reason he had been lately invoking in his own cause those very 
words. He was at a loss for an answer ; but seeing, to his re- 
lief, that Tregarva had returned to his usual impassive calm, he 
forced him to sit down, and began questioning him as to his own 
prospects and employment. 

About them Tregarva seemed hopeful enough. He had 
found out a Wesleyan minister in town who knew him, and had, 
by his means, after assisting for a week or two in the London 
City Mission, got some similar appointment in a large manufac- 
turing town. Of the state of things he spoke more sadly than 
ever. ‘ The rich can not guess, sir, how high ill-feeling, is rising 
in these days. It’s not only those who are outwardly poorest who 


232 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


long for change ; the middling people, sir, the small town shop- 
keepers especially, are nearly past all patience. One of the City 
Mission assured me that he has been watching them these sev- 
eral years past, and that nothing could beat their fortitude and 
industry, and their determination to stand peaceably by law and 
order ; but yet, this last year or two, things are growing too bad 
to bear. Do what they will, they can not get their bread ; and 
when a man can not get that, sir ’ 

‘ But what do you think is the reason of it V 

‘ How should I tell, sir ? But if I had to say, I should say 
this — ^just what they say themselves — that there are too many 
of them. Go where you will, in town or country, you’ll find 
half-a-dozen shops struggling for a custom that would only keep 
up one ; and so they’re forced to undersell one another. And 
when they’ve got down prices all they can, by fair means, they’re 
forced to get them down lower by foul — to sand the sugar, and 
sloe-leave the tea, and put — Satan only that prompts ’em knows 
what — into the bread ; and then they don’t thrive — they can’t 
thrive ; God’s curse must be on them. They begin by trying 
to oust each other, and eat each other up ; and while they’re 
eating up their neighbors, their neighbors are eating up them ; 
and so they all come to ruin together.’ 

‘ Why, you talk like Mr. Mill himself, Tregarva ; you ought 
to have been a political economist, and not a City missionary. 
By-the-by, I don’t like that profession for you.’ 

‘ It’s the Lord’s work, sir. It’s the very sending to the gen- 
tiles that the Lord promised me.’ 

‘ I don’t doubt it, Paul ; but you are meant for other things, 
if not better. There are plenty of smaller men than you to do 
that work. Do you think that God would have given you that 
strength, that brain, to waste on a work which could be done 
without them ? Those limbs would certainly be good capital 
for you, if you turned a live model at the Academy. Perhaps 
you’d better be mine ; but you can’t even be that, if you go to 
Manchester.’ 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


233 


The giant looked hopelessly down at his huge limbs. 

‘Well; God only knows what use they are of just now. 
But as for the brains, sir — in much learning is much sorrow. 
One had much better work than read, I find. If I read much 
more about what men might be, and are not, and what English 
soil might be and is not, I shall go mad. And that puts mo 
in mind of one thing I came here for, though, like a poor rude 

country fellow as I am, I clean forgot it a thinking of . 

Look here, sii ; you’ve given me a sight of books in my. time, 
and God bless you for it. But now I hear that — that you are 
determined to be a poor mar. like us ; and that you shan’t be, 
while Paul Tregarva has aught of yours. So I’ve just brought 
all the books back, and there they lie in the hall ; and may 
God reward you for the loan of them to his poor child ! And 
so, sir, farewell :’ and he rose to go. 

‘ No, Paul ; the books and you shall never part.’ 

‘ And I say, sir, the books and you shall never part.’ 

‘ Then we two can never part’ — and a sudden impulse flashed 
over him— ‘ and we will not part, Paul ! The only man whom 
I utterly love, and trust, and respect on the face of God’s earth, 
is you ; and I can not lose sight of you. If we are to earn our 
bread, let us earn it together ; if we are to endure poverty, and 
sorrow, and struggle to find out the way of bettering these 
wretched millions round us, let us learn our lesson together, 
and help each other to spell it out.’ 

‘ Do you mean what you say V asked Paul, slowly. 

. ‘Ido.’ 

‘ Then I say what you say : Where thou goest, I will go ; 
and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Come what will, I will 
be your servant, for good luck or bad, forever.’ 

‘ My^^qual, Paul, not my servant.’ 

‘ I know my place, sir. When I am as learned and as well- 
bred as you, I shall not refuse to call myself your equal ; and 
the sooner that day comes, the better I shall be pleased. Till 


234 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


then I am your friend and your brother ; but I am your scliolar, 
too, and I shall not set up myself against my master.’ 

‘ I have learnt more of you, Paul, than ever you have learnt 
of me. But be it as you will ; only whatever you may c^ll 
yourself, w^e must eat at the same table, live in the same room, 
and share alike all this world’s good things — or we shall have 
no right to share together this world’s bad things. If that is 
your bargain, there is my hand on it.’ 

‘ Amen !’ quoth Tregarva ; and the two young men joined 
hands in that sacred bond — now growing rarer and rarer year 
by year — the utter friendship of two equal manful hearts. 

‘ And now, sir, I have promised — and you would have me 
keep my promise — to go an^ work for the City Mission in 
Manchester — at least, for the next month, till a young man’s 
place, who has just left, is filled up. Will you let me go for 
that time? and then, if you hold your present mind, we will 
join home and fortunes thenceforth, and go wherever the Lord 
shall send us. There’s work enough of His waiting to be done. 
I don’t doubt but if we are willing and able. He will set us 
about the thing we’re meant for.’ 

As Lancelot opened the door for him, he lingered on the 
steps, and grasping his hand said, in a low, earnest voice : ‘ The 
Lord be with you, sir. Be sure that he has mighty things in 
store for you, or he would not have brought you so low in the 
days of our youth.’ 

‘ And so,’ as John Bunyan has it, ‘ He went on his way 
and Lancelot saw him no more till — but I must not outrun the 
order of time. 

After all, this visit came to Lancelot timely. It had roused 
him to hope, and turned off his feelings from the startling news 
he had just heard. He stepped along arm in arm with Luke, 
cheerful and fate-defiant, and as he thought of Tregarva’s 
complaints, — 

‘The beautiful ?’ he said to himself, ‘they shall have it! At 
least they shall be awakened to feel their need of it, their right 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


235 


to it. What a high destiny, to be the artist of the people ! — 
to devote one’s powers of painting, not mimicking obsolete 
legends. Pagan or Popish, but to representing to the working- 
men of England the triumphs of the Past and the yet greater 
triumphs of the Future !’ 

Luke began at once questioning him about his father. 

‘ And is he contrite and humbled ? Does he see that he has 
sinned ?’ 

‘ In what V 

‘ It is not for us to judge ; but surely it must have been some 
sin or other of his which has drawn down such a sore judgment 
on him.’ 

Lancelot smiled ; but Luke went on, not perceiving him. 

‘ Ah ! we can not find out for him. Nor has he, alas ! as a 
Protestant, much likelihood of finding out for himself. In our 
holy church he would have been compelled to discriminate his 
faults by methodic self-examination, and lay them one by one 
before his priest for advice and pardon, and so start a new and 
free man once more.’ 

‘ Do you think,’ asked Lancelot, with a smile, ‘ that he who 
will not confess his faults either to God or to himself, would 
confess it to man ? And would his priest honestly tell him 
what he really wants to know ? which sin of his has called 
down this so-called judgment? It would be imputed, I suppose, 
to some vague generality, to inattention to religious duties, to 
idolatry of the world, and so forth. But a Romish priest would be 
the last person, I should think, who could tell him fairly, in the 
present case, the cause of his affliction ; and I question whether 
he would give a patient hearing to any one who told it him.’ 

‘ How so ? Though, indeed, I have remarked that people 
are perfectly willing to be told they are miserable sinners, and 
to confess themselves such, in a general way, but if the preacher 
once begins to specify, to fix on any particular act or habit, he is 
accused of personality or uncharitableness ; his hearers are 
ready to confess guilty to any sin but the very one with which 


236 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


lie charges them. But, surely, this is just what I am urging 
against you Protestants — just what the Catholic use of confession 
obviates.’ 

‘ Attempts to do so, you mean !’ answered Lancelot. ‘ But 
what if your religion preaches formally that which only remains 
in our religion as a fast-dying superstition ? — That those judg- 
ments of God, as you call them, are not judgments at all in any 
fair use of the word, but capricious acts of punishment on the 
part of Heaven, which have no more reference to the fault 
which provokes them, than if you cut a man’s finger because 
he made a bad use of his tongue. That is part, but only a 
part, of what I meant just now, by saying that people represent 
God as capricious, proud, revengeful.’ 

‘ But do not Protestants themselves confess that our sins 
provoke God’s anger ?’ 

‘ Your common creed, when it talks rightly of God as one 
‘ who has no passions,’ ought to make you speak more reverently 
of the possibility of any act of ours disturbing the everlasting 
equanimity of the absolute Love. Why will men so often im- 
pute to God the miseries which they bring upon themselves ?’ 

‘Because, I suppose, their pride makes them more willing to 
confess themselves sinners than fools.’ 

‘Right, my friend; they will not remember that it is of 
‘ their pleasant vices that God makes wdiips to scourge them.’ 
Oh, I at least have felt the deep wisdom of that saying of Wil- 
helm Meister’s harper, that it is 

Voices from the depth of Nature borne 
Which woe upon the guilty head proclaim. 

Of Nature — of those eternal laws of hers which we daily break. 
Yes 1 it is not because God’s temper changes, but because God’s 
universe is unchangeable, that such as I, such as your poor fa- 
ther, having sown the wind must reap the whirlwind. I have 
fed my self-esteem with luxuries and not with virtue, and, losing 
them, have nothing left. He has sold himself to a system 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


237 


which is its own punishment. And yet the last place in which 
he will look for the cause of his misery is in that very money- 
mongering to which he now clings as frantically as ever. But^ 
so it is throughout the world. Only look down over that 
bridge-parapet, at that huge black -mouthed sewer, vomiting its 
pestilential riches across the mud. There it runs, and will run, 
hurrying to the sea vast stores of wealth, elaborated by Nature’s 
chemistry into the ready materials of food ; which proclaim, 
too, by their own foul smell, God’s will that they should be 
buried out of sight in the fruitful all-regenerating grave of earth : 
there it runs, turning them all into the seeds of pestilence, filth, 
and drunkenness. — And then, when it obeys the laws which 
we despise, and the pestilence is come at last, men will pray 
against it, and confess it to be ‘a judgment for their sins ;’ but 
if you ask what sin, people will talk about ‘ les voiles d’airain,’ 
as Fourier says, and tell you that it is presumptuous to pry into 
God’s secret counsels, unless, perhaps, some fanatic should in- 
form you that the cholera has been drawn down on the poor 
by the endowment of Maynooth by the rich.’ 

‘ It is most fearful, indeed, to think that these diseases should 
be confined to the poor — that a man should be exposed to 
cholera, typhus, and a host of attendant diseases, simply because 
he is born into the world an artisan ; while the rich, by the 
mere fact of money, are exempt from such curses, except when 
they come in contact with those whom they call on Sunday 
‘ their brethren,’ and on week days ‘ the masses.’ ’ 

‘ Thank Heaven that you do see that, — that in a country 
calling itself civilized and Christian, pestilence should be the 
peculiar heritage of the poor ! It is past all comment.’ 

‘ And yet are not these pestilences a judgment, even on 
them, for their dirt and profligacy V 

‘ And how should they be clean without water ? And how 
can you wonder if their appetites, sickened with filth and self- 
disgust, crave after the gin-sly)p for temporary strength, and 
then for temporary forgetfulness ? Every London doctor knows 


238 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


that I speak the truth ; would that every London preacher 
would tell that truth from his pulpit !’ 

‘ Then would you too say, that God punishes one class for 
the sins of another V 

‘ Some would say,’ answered Lancelot, half aside, ‘ that He 
may be punishing them for not demanding their right to live 
like human beings, to all those social circumstances which shall 
not make their children’s life one long disease. But are not 
these pestilences -a judgment on the rich, too, in the truest 
sense of the word ? Are they not the broad, unmistakable 
seal to God’s opinion of a state of society which confesses its 
economic relations to be so utterly rotten and confused, that it 
actually can not afford to save yearly millions of pounds’ worth 
of the materials of food, not to mention thousands of human 
lives ? Is not every man who allows such things hastening the 
ruin of the society in which he lives, by helping to foster the 
indignation and fury of its victims ? Look at tha^t group of 
stunted, haggard artisans, who are passing us. What if one 
day they should call to account the landlords whose covetous- 
ness and ignorance make their dwellings hells on earth V 

By this time they had reached the artist’s house. 

Luke refused to enter . . . . ‘ He had done with this world, 
and the painters of this world’ .... And with a tearful last 
farewell, he turned away up the street, leaving Lancelot to gaze 
at his slow, painful steps, and abject, earth-fixed mien. 

‘ Ah !’ thought Lancelot, ‘ here is the end of your anthro- 
pology ! At first, your ideal man is an angel. But your angel 
is merely an unsexed woman ; and so you are forced to go back 
to the humanity after all — but to a woman, not a man ! And 
this, in the nineteenth century, when men are telling us that 
the poetic and enthusiastic have become impossible, and that 
the only possible state of the world henceforward will be a uni- 
versal good-humored hive, of the Franklin-Ben thamite religion 
.... a vast prosaic Cockaigne of steam-mills for grinding 
sausages — for those who can get at them. And all the while, 


.DEUS E MACIIINA, 


239 


in spite of all Manchester schools, and high and dry orthodox 
schools, here are the strangest phantasms, new and old, sane 
and insane, starting up suddenly into live practical power, to 
give their prosaic theories the lie — Popish conversions, Mor- 
monisms. Mesmerisms, Californias, Continental revolutions, Paris 
days of June .... Ye hypocrites ! ye can discern the face of 
the sky, and yet ye can not discern the signs of this time !’ 

He was ushered up-stairs to the door of his studio, at which 
he knocked, and was answered by a loud ‘come in.’ Lancelot 
heard a rustle as he entered, and caught sight of a most charm- 
ing little white foot retreating hastily through the folding-doors 
into the inner-room. 

The artist, who was seated at his easel, held up his brush as 
a signal of silence, and did not even raise his eyes till he had 
finished the touches on which he was engaged. 

‘ And now — what do I see ? — the last man I should have ex- 
pected ! I thought you w’ere far down in the country. And 
what brings you to me with such serious and business-like looks V 

‘ I am a penniless youth ’ 

‘What?’ 

‘Ruined to my last shilling, and I want to turn artist.’ 

‘ Oh, ye gracious powers ! Come to my arms, brother at last 
with me in the holy order of those who must work or starve. 
Long have I wept in secret over the pernicious fullness of your 
purse !’ 

‘ Dry your tears, then, now,’ said Lancelot, ‘ for I neither have 
ten pounds in the w'orld, nor intend to have till I can earn 
them.’ 

‘ Artist !’ ran on Mellot ; ‘ ah ! you shall be an artist, in- 
deed ! You shall stay with me and become the English Michael 
Angelo ; or, if you are fool enough, go to Rome, and utterly 
eclipse Overbeck, and throw Schadow forever into the shade.’ 

‘ I fine you a supper,’ said Lancelot, ‘ for that execrable at- 
tempt at a pun.’ 

‘ Agreed ! Here, Sabina, send to Covent Garden for huge 


240 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


nosegays, and get out the best bottle of Burgundy. We will 
pass an evening worthy of Horace, and with garlands and 
libations honor the muse of painting.’ 

‘ Luxurious dog !’ said Lancelot, ‘ with all your cant about 
poverty.’ 

As he spoke the folding-doors opened, and an exquisite little 
brunette danced in from the inner-room, in which, by-the-by 
had been going on all the while a suspicious rustling, as of gar- 
ments hastily arranged. She was dressed gracefully in a loose 
French morning-gown, down which Lancelot’s eye glanced toward 
the little foot, which, however, was now hidden in a tiny velvet 
slipper. The artist’s wife was a real beauty, though without a 
single perfect feature, except a most delicious little mouth, a 
skin like velvet, and clear brown eyes, from which beamed 
earnest simplicity and arch good-humor. She darted forward 
to her husband’s friend, while her rippling brown hair, fantasti- 
cally arranged, fluttered about her neck, and seizing Lancelot’s 
hands successively in both of hers, broke out in an accent pret- 
tily tinged with French, — 

‘ Charming ! — delightful ! And so you are really going to 
turn painter ! And I have longed so to be introduced to you ! 
Claude has been raving about you these two years; you already 
seem to me the oldest friend in the world. You must not go 
to Rome. We shall keep you, Mr. Lancelot-; positively you 
must come and live with us — we shall be the happiest trio in 
London. I will make you so comfortable ; you must let me 
cater for you^cook for you.’ 

‘ And be my study sometimes V said Lancelot, smiling. 

‘ Ah,’ she said, blushing, and shaking her pretty little fist at 
Claude, ‘ that madcap ! how he has betrayed me ! When he 
is at his easel, he is so in the seventh. heaven, that he sees noth- 
ing, thinks of nothing, but his own dreams.’ 

At this moment a heavy step sounded on the stairs, the dc-or 
opened, and there entered, to Lancelot’s astonishment, the 
stranger who had just puzzled him so much at his uncle’s. 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


241 


Claude rose reverentially, and came forward, but Sabina was 
beforehand with him, and running up to her visitor, kissed his 
hand again and again, almost kneeling to him. 

‘ The dear master !’ she cried ; ‘ what a delightful surprise ! 
we have not seen you this fortnight past, and gave you up for 
lost.’ 

‘ Where do you come from, my dear master V asked Claude. 

* From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up 
and down in it,’ answered he, smiling, and laying his finger on 
his lips, ‘ my dear pupils. And you are both well and happy V 

‘ Perfectly, and doubly delighted at your presence to-day, for 
your advice will come in a providential moment for my friend here.’ 

‘ Ah !’ said the strange man, ‘ well met once more ! So you 
are going to turn painter V 

He bent a severe and searching look on Lancelot. 

‘ You have a painter’s face, young man,’ he said: ‘go on and 
prosper. What branch of art do you intend to study V 

‘The ancient Italian painters, as my first step.’ 

‘Ancient? it is not four hundred years since Perugino died. 
But I should suppose you do not intend to ignore classic art ?’ 

‘ You have divined rightly. I wish, in the study of the an- 
tique, to arrive at the primeval laws of unfallen human beauty.’ 

‘ Were Phidias and Praxiteles, then, so primeval ? the world 
had lasted many a thousand years before their turn came. If 
you intend to begin at the beginning, why not go back at once 
to the Garden of Eden, and there study the true antique ?’ 

‘ If there were but any relics of it,’ said Lancelot, puzzled and 
laughing. 

‘You would find it very near you, young man, if you had 
but eyes to see it.’ 

Claude Mellot laughe'd significantly, and Sabina clapped her 
little hands. 

‘ Yet till you take him with you, master, and show it to him, 
he must needs be content with the Royal Academy and the 
Elgin marbles.’ 

L 


242 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


‘ But to what branch of painting, pray,’ said the master to 
Lancelot, ‘ will you apply your knowledge of the antique ? 
Will you, like this foolish fellow here’ (with a kindly glance at 
Claude), ‘ fritter yourself away on Nymphs and Venuses, in 
which neither he nor any one else believes V 

‘ Historic art, as the highest,’ answered Lancelot, * is my 
ambition.’ 

‘ It is well to aim at the highest, but only when it is possible 
for us. And how can such a school exist in England now ? 
You English must learn to understand your own history before 
you paint it. Rather follow in the steps of your Turners, and 
Landseers, and Stanfields, and Ores wicks, and add your contri- 
bution to the present noble school of naturalist painters. That 
is the niche in the temple which God has set you English to 
fill up just now. These men’s patient, reverent faith in Nature 
as they see her, their knowledge that the ideal is neither to be 
invented nor abstracted, but found and left where God has put 
it, and where alone it can be represented, in actual and individ- 
ual phenomena ; — in these lies an honest development of the 
true idea of Protestantism, which is paving the way to the 
mesothetic art of the future.’ 

‘ Glorious !’ said Sabina : ‘ not a single word that we poor 
creatures can understand !’ 

But our hero, who always took a virtuous delight in hear- 
ing what he could not comprehend, went on to question the 
orator. 

‘ What, then, is the true idea of Protestantism V said he. 

‘The universal symbolism and dignity of matter, whether in 
man or nature.’ 

‘ But the Puritans ?’ 

‘ Were inconsistent with themselves and with Protestantism, 
and therefore God would not allow them to succeed. Yet 
their rupudiation of all art was better than the Judas-kiss w^hicli 
Romanism bestows on it, in the meager eclecticism of the an- 
cient religious schools, and of your modern Overbecks ani 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


243 


Pugins. The only really ^^holesome designer of great power, 
whom I have seen in Germany, is Kaulbach ; and perhaps 
every one would not agree with my reasons for admiring him, 
in this whitewashed age. But you, young sir, were meant for 
better things than art. Many young geniuses have an early 
hankering, as Goethe had, to turn painters. It seems the 
shortest and easiest method of embodying their conceptions in 
visible form ; but they get wiser afterward, when they find in 
themselves thoughts that can not be laid upon the canvas. Come 
with me, I like striking while the iron is hot; walk with me 
toward my lodgings, and we will discuss this weighty matter.’ 

And with a gay farewell to the adoring little Sabina he passed 
an iron arm through Lancelot’s, and marched him down into 
the street. 

Lancelot was surprised and almost nettled at the sudden in-* 
fluence which he found this quaint personage was exerting over 
him. But he had, of late, tasted the high delight of feeling 
himself under the guidance of a superior mind, and longed to 
enjoy it once more. Perhaps they were reminiscences of this 
kind which stirred in him the strange fancy of a connection, 
almost of a likeness, between his new acquaintance and Arge- 
raone. He asked, humbly enough, why Art was to be a for- 
bidden path to him ? 

* Because you are an Englishman, and a man of uncommon 
talent, unless your physiognomy belies you ; and one, too, for 
whom God has strange things in store, or He would not have 
so suddenly and strangely overthrown you.’ 

Lancelot started. He remembered that Tregarva bad said 
just the same thing to him that very morning, and the (to him) 
strange coincidence sank deep into his heart. 

‘ You must be a politician,’ the stranger went on. ‘ You are 
bound to it as your birthright. It has been England’s privi- 
lege hitherto to solve all political questions as they arise for 
the rest of the world ; it is her duty now. Here, or nowhere, 
must the solution be attempted of those social problems which 


244 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


are convulsing more and more all Christendom. She can not 
afford to waste brains like yours, while in thousands of reeking 
alleys, such as that one opposite us, heathens and savages are 
demanding the rights of citizenship. Whether they be right 
or wrong, is what you, and such as you, have to find out at 
this day.’ 

Silent and thoughtful, Lancelot walked on by his side. 

‘ What is become of your friend Tregarva ? I met him this 
morning after he parted from you, and had some talk with him. 
I was sorely minded to enlist him. Perhaps I shall ; in the 
mean time, I shall busy myself with you.’ 

‘ In v/hat way,’ asked Lancelot, ‘ most strange sir, of whose 
name, much less of whose occupation, I can gain no tidings ?’ 

‘ My name for the time being is Barnakill. And as for busi- 
ness, as it is your English fashion to call new things obstinately 
by old names, careless whether they apply or not, you may 
consider me as a recruiting-sergeant ; which trade, indeed, I 
follow, though I am no more like the popular red-coated ones 
than your present ‘ glorious constitution’ is like William the 
Third’s or Overbeck’s high art like Fra Angelico’s. Farewell. 
When I want you, which will be most likely when you want 
me, I shall find you again.’ 

The evening was passed, as Claude had promised, in a true 
Horatian manner. Sabina was most piquante, and Claude in- 
terspersed his genial and enthusiastic eloquence witlj various 
wise saws of ‘ the prophet.’ 

‘But why on earth,’ quoth Lancelot, at last, ‘do you call him 
a prophet ?’ 

‘ Because he is one ; it’s his business, his calling. He gets 
his living thereby, as the showman did by his elephant.’ 

‘ But what does he foretell ?’ 

‘ Oh, son of the earth ! And you went to Cambridge — are 
reported to have gone in for the thing, or phantom, called the 
tripos, and taken a first class ! . . . . Did you ever look out the 
word ‘ prophetes,’ in Liddell and Scott?’ 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


245 


‘ Why; what do you know about Liddell and Scott V 

‘Nothing, thank goodness; I never had time to waste over 
the crooked letters. But I have heard say that prophetes 
means, not a foreteller, but an outteller — one who declares the 
will of the deity, and interprets his oracles. Is it not so V 

‘ Undeniably.’ 

, ‘ And that he became a foreteller among heathens at least 
— as I consider, among all peoples whatsoever — because know- 
ing the real bearing of what had happened, and what was 
happening, he could discern the signs of the times, and so had 
what the world calls a shrewd guess — what I, like a Pantheist 
as I am denominated, should call a divine and inspired fore- 
sight — of what was going to happen.’ 

‘A new notion, and a pleasant one, for it looks something 
like a law.’ 

‘ I am no scollard, as they would say in Whitford, you know ; 
but it has often struck me, that if folks would but believe that 
the Apostles talked not such very bad Greek, and had some 
slight notion of the received meaning of the words they used, 
and of the absurdity of using the same term to express nine- 
teen different things, the New Testament would be found to 
be a much simpler and more severely philosophic book than 
‘Theologians’ (‘ Anthroposophists’ I call them) fancy.’ 

‘Where on earth did you get all this wisdom, or foolish- 
ness V 

‘ From the prophet, a fortnight ago.’ 

‘ Who is this prophet ? I will know.’ 

‘ Then you will know more than I do. Sabina — flight my 
meerschaum, there’s a darling ; it will taste the sweeter after 
your lips.’ And Claude laid his delicate woman-like limbs 
upon the sofa, and looked the very picture of luxurious non- 
chalance. 

‘What is he, you pitiless wretch?’ 

‘ Fairest Hebe, fill our Prometheus Vinctus another glass of 
Burgundy, and find your guitar, to silence him.’ 


246 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


‘ It was the ocean nymphs who came to comfort Prometheus 
— and unsandalled, too, if I recollect right,’ said Lancelot, 
smiling at Sabina. ‘ Come now, if he will not tell me, perhaps 
you will V 

Sabina only blushed, and laughed mysteriously. 

‘You surely are intimate with him, Claude? When and 
where did you meet him first ?’ 

‘ Seventeen years ago, on the barricades of the three days, 
in the charming little pandemonium called Paris, he picked me 
out of a gutter, a boy of fifteen, with a musket-ball through 
my body ; mended me, and sent me to a painter’s studio. . . . 
The next sejour I had with him began in sight of the Dema- 
wend. Sabina, perhaps you might like to relate to Mr. Smith 
that interview, and the circumstances under which you made 
your first sketch of that magnificent and little-known 
volcano V 

Sabina blushed again — this time scarlet; and, to Lancelot’s 
astonishment, pulled off her slipper, and brandishing it daintily, 
uttered some unintelligible threat, in an Oriental language at 
the laughing Claude. 

‘Why, you must have been in the East?’ 

‘ Why not ? Do you think that figure and that walk were 

picked up in stay-ridden, toe-pinching England ? Ay, in 

the East ; and why not elsewhere ? Do you think I got my 
knowledge of the human figure from the live-model room in 
the Royal Academy ?’ 

‘ I certainly have always had my doubts of it. You are the 
only man I know who can paint muscle in motion.’ 

‘ Because I am almost the only man in England who has 
ever seen it. Artists should go to the Cannibal Islands for 

that J’ai fait le grand tour. I should not wonder if the 

prophet made you take it.’ 

‘ That would be very much as I chose.’ 

‘ Or otherwise.’ 

‘ What do you mean V 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


241 


‘That if he wills you to go, I defy you to stay. Eh, 
Sabina V 

‘Well, you are a very mysterious pair, — and a very charming 
one.’ 

‘ So we think oui’selves — as to the charmingness .... and 
as for the mystery . . . . ‘ Omnia exeunt in mysterium,’ says 
somebody, somewhere, — or if he don’t, ought to, seeing that it 
is so. You will be a mystery some day, and a myth; and a 
thousand years hence, pious old ladies will be pulling caps as 
to whether you were a saint or a devil, and whether you did 
really work miracles or not, as corroborations of your ex-supra- 

lunar illumination on social questions Yes .... you 

will have to submit, and see Bogy, and enter the Eleusinian 
mysteries. Eh, Sabina?’ 

‘My dear Claude, what between the Burgundy and your 
usual foolishness, you seem very much inclined to divulge the 
Eleusinian mysteries.’ 

‘ I can’t well do that, my beauty, seeing that, if you recollect, 
we were both turned back at the vestibule, for a pair of 
naughty children as we are.’ 

‘Do be quiet! and let me enjoy, for once, my woman’s right 
to the last word 1’ 

And in this hopeful state of mystification, Lancelot w^ent 
home, and dreamt of Argemone. 

His uncle would, and, indeed, as it seemed, could, give him 
very little information on the question which had so excited his 
curiosity. He had met the man in India many years before, 
had received there from him most important kindnesses, and 
considered him, from experience, of oracular wdsdom. He 
seemed to have an unlimited command of money, though most 
frugal in his private habits ; visited England for a short time 
every few years, and always under a different appellation ; but 
as for his real name, habitation, or business, here or at home, 
tlie good banker knew nothing, except that whenever questioned 


248 


DEUS E MACHINA. 


on them, he wandered off into Pantagruelist jokes, and ended 
in Cloudland. So that Lancelot was fain to give up his 
questions, and content himself with longing for the re-appear- 
ance of this inexplicable sage. 


CHAPTER XVL 


ONCE IN A WAY. 

A FEW mornings afterward, Lancelot, as he glanced his eye 
over the columns of The Times, stopped short at the beloved 
name of Whitford. To his disgust and disappointment, it only 
occurred in one of those miserable cases, now of weekly occur- 
rence, of concealing the birth of a child. He was turning from 
it, when he saw Bracebridge’s name. Another look sufficed 
to show him that he ought to go at once to the colonel, who 
had returned the day before from Norway. 

A few minutes brought him to his friend’s lodgfng, but The 
Times had arrived there before him. Bracebridge was sitting 
over his untasted breakfast, his face buried in his hands. 

‘ Do not speak to me,’ he said, without looking up. ‘ It was 
ri^t of you to come — kind of you ; but it is too late.’ 

He started, and looked wildly round him, as if listening for 
some sound which he expected, and then laid his head down on 
the table. Lancelot turned to go. 

‘ No — do not leave me 1 Not alone, for God’s sake, not 
alone !’ 

Lancelot sat down. There was a fearful alteration in Brace- 
bridge. His old keen self-confident look had vanished. He 
was haggard, life- weary, shame-stricken, almost abject. His 
limbs looked quite shrunk and powerless, as he rested his head 
on the table before him, and murmured incoherently from time 
to time — 


250 


ONCE IN A WAY. 


‘ My own child ! And I never shall have another 1 No 

feccond chance for those who • Oh Mary ! Mary ! you 

might have waited — ^you might have trusted me ! And why 
should you ? — ay, why, indeed ? And such a pretty baby, too ! 
— just like his father 1’ 

Lancelot laid his hand kindly on his shoulder. 

‘ My dearest Bracebridge, the evidence proves that the child 
was born dead.’ 

‘They lie!’ he said, fiercely, starting up. ‘It cried twice 
after it was born 1’ 

Lancelot stood horror-struck. 

‘ I heard it last night, and the night before that, and the 
night before that again, under my pillow, shrieking — stifling — 
two little squeaks, like a caught hare ; and I tore the pillows 
off it — I did ; and once I saw it, and it had beautiful black 
eyes, just like its father — just like a little miniature that used 
to lie on my mother’s table, when I knelt at her knee, before 
they sent me out ‘ to see life,’ and Eton, and the army, and 
Crockford’s, and Newmarket, and fine gentlemen, and fine la- 
dies, and luxury, and flattery, brought me to this 1 Oh, father ! 
father 1 was that the only way to make a gentleman of your 
son ? — There it is again ! Don’t you hear it? — under the sofa- 
cushions ! Tear them off 1 Curse you I Save it !’ 

And, with a fearful oath, the wretched man sent Lanc^ot 
staggering across the room, and madly tore up the cushions. 

A long postman’s knock at the door. He suddenly rose up, 
quite collected. 

‘ The letter I I knew it would come. She need not have 
written it : I know what is in it.’ 

The servant’s step came up the stairs. Poor Bracebridge 
turned to Lancelot with something of his old stately determi- 
nation. 

‘I must be alone when I receive this letter. Stay hero.’ 
And with compressed lips and fixed eyes, he stalked out at the 
door, and shut it. 


ONCE IN A WAY. 


251 


Lancelot heard him stop ; then the servant’s footsteps down 
the stairs ; then the colonel’s treading slowly and heavily, went 
step by step up to the room above. He shut that door too. 
A dead silence followed. Lancelot stood in fearful suspense, 
and held his breath to listen. Perhaps he had fainted ? No, 
for then he would have heard a fall. Perhaps he had fallen on 
the bed ? He would go and see. No, he would wait a little 
longer. Perhaps he was praying ? He had told Lancelot to 
pray once — he dared not interrupt him now. A slight stir — 
a noise as of an opening box. Thank God, he was, at least, 
alive ! Nonsense ! Why should he not be alive ? What 
could happen to him ? And yet he knew that something was 
going -to happen. The silence was ominous — unbearable; the 
air of the room felt heavy and stifling, as if a thunder-storm 
were about to burst. He longed to hear the man raging and 
stamping. And yet he could not connect the thought of one 
so gay and full of gallant life, with the terrible dread that was 
creeping over him, — with the terrible scene which he had just 
witnessed. It must be all a temporary excitement — a mistake 
— a hideous dream, which the next post would sweep away. 
He would go and tell him so. No, he could not stir. His 
limbs seemed leaden, his feet felt rooted to the ground, as in 
long nightmare. And still the intolerable silence brooded 
overhead. 

What broke it ? A dull, stilled report, as of a pistol fired 
against the ground ; a heavy fall ; and again the silence of 
death. 

He rushed up stairs. A corpse lay on its face upon the 
door, and from among its bair a crimson thread crept slowly 
across the carpet. It was all over. He bent over the head ; 
but one look was sufficient. He did not try to lift it up. 

On the table lay the fatal paper. Lancelot knew that he 
had a right to read it. It was scrawled, mis-spelt — but there 
were no tear-blots on tho paper : — 

‘ Sir, — ^I am in prison — and where are you ? Cruel man 1 


252 


ONCE IN A WAY. 


Where were you all those miserable weeks, while I was coming 
nearer and nearer tc my shame ? Murdering dumb beasts in 
foreign lands. You have murdered more than them. How 1 
loved you once ! How I hate you now ! But I have my re- 
venge. Your hahy cried twice after it was born P 

Lancelot tore the letter into a hundred pieces, and swallowed 
them, for every foot in the house was on the stairs. 

So there was terror, and confusion, and running in and out ; 
but there were no wet eyes there except those of Bracebridge’s 
groom, who threw himself on the body, and would not stir. 
And then there was a coroner’s inquest ; and it came out in 
the evidence how ‘ the deceased had been for several days very 
much depressed, and had talked of voices and apparitions 
whereat the ^ury — as twelve honest, good-natured Christians 
were bound to do — returned a verdict of temporary insanity ; 
and in a week more the penny-a-liners grew tired ; and the 
w’orld, too, who never expect any thing, not even French revo- 
lutions, grew tired also of repeating, — ‘ Dear me ! who would 
have expected it V and having filled up the colonel’s place, 
swaggered on as usual, arm-in-arm with the flesh and the 
devil. 

Bracebridge’s death had, of course, a great effect on Lance- 
lot’s spirit. Not in the way of warning, though — such events 
seldom act in that way, on the highest as well as on the low- 
est minds. After all, your ‘ Rakes’ Progresses,’ and ‘ Atheists’ 
Death-beds,’ do no more good than noble George Cruikshank’s 
‘ Bottle’ will, because every one knows that they are the excep- 
tion, and not the rule ; that the Atheist generally dies with a 
conscience as comfortably callous as a rhinoceros’ hide ; and the 
rake, when old age stops his power of sinning, becomes gener- 
ally rather more respectable than his neighbors. The New 
Testament deals very little in appeals ad terrorem ; and it 
would be well if some, who fancy that they follow it, would do 
the same, and by abstaining from making ‘ hell-fire’ the chief 
incentive to virtue, cease from tempting many a poor fellow to 


ONCE IN A WAY. 


258 


enlist on the devil’s side the only manly feeling he has left — 
personal courage. 

But yet Lancelot was affected. And when, on the night of 
the colonel’s funeral, he opened, at hazard, Argemone’s Bible, 
and his eyes fell on the passage which tells how ‘ one shall be 
taken and another left,’ great honest tears of gratitude dropped 
upon the page ; and he fell on his knees, and in bitter self-re- 
proach thanked the new found Upper Powers, who, as he began 
to hope, were leading him not in vain, — that he had yet a life 
before him wherein to play the man. 

And now he felt that the last link was broken between him 
and all his late frivolous companions. Ail had deserted him in 
his ruin but this one — and he was silent in the grave. And 
now, from the world and all its toys and revelry, he was parted 
once and forever ; and he stood alone in the desert, like the 
last Arab of a plague-stricken tribe, looking over the wreck of 
ancient cities, across barren sands, where far rivers gleamed in 
the distance, that seemed to beckon him away into other climes, 
other hopes, other duties. Old things had passed away — when 
would all things become new ? 

Not yet, Lancelot. Thou hast still one selfish hope, one 
dream of bliss, however impossible, yet still cherished. Thou 
art a changed man — but for whose sake ? For Argemone’s. Is 
she to be thy god, then ? Art thou to live for her, or for the 
sake of One greater than she ? All thine idols are broken — 
swiftly the desert sands are drifting over them, and covering 
them in. — All but one — must that, too, be taken from thee ? 

One morning a letter was put into Lancelot’s hands, bearing 
the Whitford post-mark. Tremblingly he tore it open. It con- 
tained a few passionate words from Honoria. Argemone was 
dying of typhus-fever, and entreating to see him once again ; 
and Honoria had, with some difficulty, as she hinted, obtained 
leave from her parents to send for him. His last bank-note 
carried him down to Whitford ; and, calm and determined, as 
one who feels that he has nothing more to lose on earth, and 


254 


ONCE IN A WAT. 


whose ‘ torment must henceforth become his element,’ he enter- 
ed the Priory that evening. 

He hardly spoke or looked at a soul ; he felt that he was 
there on an errand which none understood ; that he was moving 
toward Argemone through a spiritual w^orld, in which he and 
she were alone ; that, in his utter poverty and hopelessness, he 
stood above all the luxury, even above all the sorrow, around 
him ; that she belonged to him, and to him alone ; and the 
broken-hearted beggar followed the weeping Honoria toward 
his lady’s chamber, with the step and bearing of a lord. 
He was wrong ; there was pride and fierceness enough in 
his heart, mingled with that sense of nothingness of rank, 
money, chance and change, yea, death itself, of all but Love ; 
— mingled even with that intense belief that his sorrows 
were but his just deserts, which now possessed all his soul. 
And in after-years ’ he knew that he was wu’ong ; but so he felt 
at the time ; and even then the strength was not all of earth 
which bore him manlike through that hour. 

He entered the room ; the darkness, the silence, the cool 
scent of vinegar, struck a shudder through him. The squire was 
sitting, half idiotic and helpless, in his arm-chair. His face 
lighted up as Lancelot entered, and he tried to hold out his 
palsied hand. Lancelot did not see him. Mrs. Lavington 
moved proudly and primly back from the bed, with a face that 
seemed to say through its tears, ‘I at least am responsible for 
nothing that occurs from this interview.’ Lancelot did not see 
her either ; he walked straight up toward the bed as if he were 
treading on his own ground. His heart was between his lips, 
and yet his whole soul felt as dry and hard as some burnt-out 
volcano-crater. 

A faint voice — oh, how faint, how changed ! — called him 
from within the closed curtains. 

‘ He is there ! I know it is he ! Lancelot ! my Lancelot !’ 

Silently still he drew aside the curtain ; the light fell full 
upon her face. AVhat a sight ! Her beautiful hair cut close, 


OXCE IN A WAY. 


255 


a ghastly white handkerchief round her head, those bright eyes 
sunk and lustreless, those ripe lips baked, and black and drawn ; 
her thin hand fingering uneasily the coverlid — It was too much 
for him. He shuddered, and turned his face away. Quick- 
sighted that love is, even to the last ! slight as the gesture was, 
she saw it in an instant. 

‘ You are not afraid of infection V she said, faintly. ‘ I was not.’ 

Lancelot laughed aloud, as men will at strangest moments, 
sprung toward her with open arms, and threw himself on his 
knees beside the bed. With sudden strength she rose upright, 
and clasped him in her arms. 

‘ Once more !’ she sighed, in a whisper to hereelf. ‘ Once 
more on earth !’ And the room, and the spectators, and dis- 
ease itself, faded from around them like vain dreams, as she 
nestled closer and closer to him, and gazed into his eyes, and 
passed her shrunken hand over his cheeks, and toyed with his 
hair, and seemed to drink in magnetic life from his embrace. 

Ho one spoke or stirred. They felt that an awful and bless- 
ed spirit overshadowed the lovers, and were hushed, as if in the 
sanctuary of God. 

Suddenly again she raised her head from his bosom, and in 
a tone, in which her old queenliness mingled strangely with the 
saddest tenderness, — 

‘ All of you must go away now ; I must talk to my husband 
alone.’ 

They went, leading out the squire, who cast puzzled glances 
toward the pair, and murmured to himself that ‘ she w’as sure to 
get well now Smith was come : every thing w’ent right when he 
was in the way.’ 

So they were left alone. 

‘ I do not look so very ugly, my darling, do I ? Not so very 
ugly ? though they have cut off all my poor hair, and I told 
them so often not ! but I kept a lock for you and feebly she 
drew from under the pillow a long auburn tress, and tried tc 
wreathe it round his neck, but could not, and sunk back. 


256 


ONCE IN A WAY. 


Poor fellow ! he could bear no more. He hid his face in his 
hands, and burst into a long low weeping. 

‘ I am very thirsty, darling ; reach me No, I will drink 

no more, except from your dear lipsi:’ 

He lifted up his head, and breathed his whole soul upon her 
lips ; his tears fell on her closed eyelids. 

‘ Weeping ? No. — You must not cry. See how comforta 
ble I am. They are all so kind — soft bed, cool room, fresh 
air, sweet drinks, sweet- scents. Oh, so different from that 
room !’ 

‘ What room ? — my own !’ 

‘ Listen, and I will tell you. Sit down — put your arm under 
my head — So. When I am on your bosom I feel so strong. 
God ! let me last to tell him all. It was for that I sent for 
him.’ 

And then, in broken words, she told him how she had gone 
up to the fever patient at Ashy, on the fatal night on which 
Lancelot had last seen her. Shuddering, she hinted at the hor- 
rible filth and misery she had seen, at the foul scents which had 
sickened her. A madness of remorse, she said, had seized her. 
She had gone, in spite of her disgust, to several houses, which 
she found open. There were worse cottages there, than even 
her father’s ; some tradesman in a neighboring town had been 
allowed to run up a set of rack-rent hovels. — Another shudder 
seized her when she spoke of them ; and from that point in her 
story, all was fitful, broken, like the images of a hideous dream. 
‘ Every instant those foul memories were defiling her nostrils. 
A horrible loathing had taken possession of her, recurring from 
time to time, till it ended in delirium and fever. A scent-fiend 
was haunting her night and day,’ she said. ‘ And now the 
Curse of the Lavingtons had truly come upon her^-To perish 
by the people whom they made. Their neglect, cupidity, op- 
pression, are avenged on me ! Why not ? Have I not wan- 
toned in down and perfumes, while they, by whose labor my 
luxuries were bought, were pining among scents and sounds, — 


ONCE IN A WAY. 


257 


one day of which would have driven me mad ! And then they 
wonder why men turn Chartists ! There are those horrible 
scents again ! Save me from them ! Lancelot — darling ! Take 
me to the fresh air ! I choke ! I am festering away ! The 
Nun-pool ! Take all the water, every drop, and wash Ashy 
clean again Make a great fountain in it — beautiful marble— 
to bubble, and gurgle, and trickle, and foam, forever and ever, 
and wash away the sins of the Lavingtons, that the little rosy 
children may play round it, and the poor toil-bent women may 

wash — and wash— and drink Water! water I I am dying 

of thirst r 

He gave her water, and then she lay back and babbled about 
the Nun-pool sweeping ‘ all the houses of Ashy into one beau- 
tiful palace, among great flower-gardens, where the school chil- 
dren will sit and sing such merry hymns, and never struggle 

with great pails of water up the hill of Ashy any more.’ 

^ 

‘ You will do it ? darling ! Strong, wise, noble-hearted, that 
you are I Why do you look at me ? You will be rich some 
day. You will own land, for you are worthy to own it. Oh 
that I could give you Whitford ! No I It was mine too long 
— therefore I die I because I ^Lord Jesus 1 have I not repent- 

ed of my sin V • 

Then she grew calm once more. A soft smile crept over her 
face, as it grew sharper and paler every moment. Faintly she 
sank back on the pillows, and faintly whispered to him to kneel 
and pray. He obeyed her mechanically. . . .‘ No — not for me, 
for them — for them and for yourself — that you may save them 
whom I never dreamt that I was bound to save 1’ 

And he knelt and prayed . . . .what, he alone, and those 
who heard his prayer, can tell. . . . 

it •'k ^ ^ % 

When he lifted up his head at last, he saw that Argemone 
lay motionless. For a moment he thought she was dead, and 
frantically sprang to the bell The family rushed in with the 


258 


ONCE IN A WAY. 


physician. She gave some faint token of life, but none of con 
sciousness. The doctor sighed, and said that lier end was near. 
Lancelot had known that all along. 

‘ I think, sir, you had better leave the room,’ said Mrs. Lav 
ington ; and followed him into the passage. 

What she was about to say remained unspoken ; for Lance- 
lot seized her hand in spite of her, with frantic thanks for hav- 
ing allowed him this one interview, and entreaties that he might 
see her again if but for one moment. 

Mrs. Lavington, somewhat more softly than usual, said, — 
‘ That the result of this visit had not been such as to make a 
second desirable — that she had no wish to disturb her daugh- 
ter’s mind at such a moment with earthly regrets.’ 

‘ Earthly regrets !’ How little she knew what had passed 
there ! But if she had known, would she have been one whit 
softened ? For, indeed, Argemone’s spirituality was not in her 
mother’s language. And yet the good woman had prayed, 
and prayed, and wept bitter tears, by her daughter’s bedside, 
day after day ; but she had never heard her pronounce the tal- 
ismanic formula of words, necessary, in her eyes, to insure sal- 
vation ; and so she was almost without hope for her. Oh Big- 
otry ! Devil, who turnest God’s love into man’s curse ! are not 
human hearts hard and blind enough of themselves, without 
thy cursed help ? 

For one moment a storm of unutterable pride and rage con- 
vulsed Lancelot — the next instant love conquered ; and the 
strong proud man threw himself on his knees at the feet of the 
woman he despised, and with wild sobs entreated for one mo- 
ment more — one only ! 

At that instant a shriek from Honoria resounded from the 
sick chamber. Lancelot knew what it meant, and sprang up, 
as men do when shot through the heart. — In a moment he 
was himself again. A new life had begun for him — alone. 

‘ You will not need to grant my prayer, madam,’ he said 
calmly : ‘ Argemone is dead.’ 


CHAPTEE XVII. 


THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEAIH. 

Let us pass over the period of dull, stupefied misery that 
followed when Lancelot had returned to his lonely lodging, and 
the excitement of his feelings had died away. It is impossible 
to describe that which could not be separated into parts, in 
which there was no foreground, no distance, but only one dead, 
black, colorless present. After a time, however, he began to 
find that fancies, almost ridiculously trivial, arrested and ab- 
sorbed his attention ; even as when our eyes have become ac- 
customed to darkness, every light-colored mote shows luminous 
against the void blackness of night. So we are tempted to 
unseemly frivolity in churches, and at funerals, and all most 
solemn moments ; and so Lancelot found his imagination flut- 
tering back, half amused, to every smallest circumstance of the 
last few weeks, as objects of mere curiosity, and found with 
astonishment that they had lost their power of paining him. 
Just as victims on the rack have fallen it is said, by length of 
torture, into insensibility, and even calm repose, his brain had 
been wrought until all feeling was benumbed. He began to 
think what an interesting autobiography his life might make ; 
and the events of the last few years began to arrange themselves 
in a most attractive dramatic form. He began even to work 
out a scene or two, and where ‘ motives’^ seemed wanting, to 
invent them here and there. He sat thus for hours silent over 
his fire, playing with his old self, as though it were a thing 


260 


THE VALLEY OF 


which did not belong to him — a suit of clothes which he had 
put off, and which, 

‘For that it was too rich to hang by the wall, 

It must be ripped,* 

and then pieced, and dizened out afresh as a toy. And then 
again he started away from his own thoughts, at finding him- 
self on the edge of that very gulf which, as Mellot had lately 
told him, Barnakill denounced as the true hell of genius, where 
Art is regarded as an end and not a means, and objects are in- 
teresting, not in as far as they form our spirits, but in propor- 
tion as they can be shaped into effective parts of some beautiful 
whole. But whether it was a temptation or none, the desire 
recurred to him again and again. He even attempted to write, 
but sickened at the sight of the first words. He turned to his 
pencil, and tried to represent with it one scene at least; and 
with the horrible calmness of some self- torturing ascetic, he sat 
down to sketch a drawing of himself and Argemone on her dy- 
ing day, with her head upon his bosom for the last time — and 
then tossed it angrily into the fire, partly because he felt just 
as he had in his attempts to write, that there was something 
more in all these events than he could utter by pen or pencil, 
than he could even understand ; principally because he could 
not arrange the attitudes gracefully enough. And now, in 
front of the stern realities of sorrow and death, he began to see 
a meaning in another mysterious saying of Barnakilhs, which 
Mellot was continually quoting, that ‘ Art was never Art till it 
was more than Art : that the Finite only existed ao the body 
of the Infinite ; and that the man of genius must first know the 
Infinite, unless he wished to become not a poet, but a maker of 
idols.’ Still he felt in himself a capability, nay, an infinite long- 
ing to speak ; though what he should utter, or how— whether 
as poet, social theorist, preacher, he could not yet decide. Barn- 
akill had forbidden him painting, and, though he hardly knew 
why, he dared not disobey him. But Argemone’s dying words 


THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 


261 


lay on him as a divine command to labor. All his doubts, his 
social observations, his dreams of the beautiful and the blissful, 
his intense perception of social evils, his new-born hope — faith 
it could not yet be called — in a ruler and deliverer of the 
world, all urged him on to labor : but at what ? He felt as if 
he were the demon in the legend, condemned to twine endless 
ropes of sand. The world, outside which he now stood for 
good and evil, seemed to him like some frantic whirling waltz ; 
some serried struggling crowd, which rushed past him in aim- 
less confusion, without allowing him time or opening to take 
his place among their ranks ; and as for wings to rise above, and 
to look down upon the uproar, where were they ? His melan- 
choly paralyzed him more and more. He was too listless even 
to cater for his daily bread by writing his articles for the mag- 
azines. Why should he ? He had nothing to say. Why 
should he pour out words and empty sound, and add one more 
futility to the herd of ‘prophets that had become wind, and 
had no truth in them V Those who could write without a con- 
science, without an object except that of seeing their own fine 
words, and filling their own pockets — let them do it : for his 
part he would have none of it. But his purse was empty, and 
so was his stomach ; and as for asking assistance of his uncle, 
it was returning like the dog to his vomit. So one day he 
settled all bills with his last shillings, tied up his remaining 
clothes in a bundle, and stoutly stepped forth into the street to 
find a job — to hold a horse, if nothing better offered ; when, 
behold ! on the threshold he met Barnakill himself. 

‘ Whither away V said that strange personage. ‘ I was just 
going to call on you.’ 

‘ To eat my bread by the labor of my hands. So our fathers 
all began.’ 

‘ And so their sons must all end. Do you want work ?’ 

‘ Yes, if you have any.’ 

‘ Follow me, and carry a trunk home from a shop to my lodgings. 

He strode off, with Lancelot after him ; entered a mathemat 


262 


THE VALLEY OF 


ical-instrument maker’s shop in the neighboring street, and 
pointed out a heavy corded case to Lancelot, who, with the as- 
sistance of the shopman, got it on his shoulders ; and trudging 
forth through the streets after his employer, who walked before 
him silent and unregarding, felt himself for the first time in his 
life in the same situation as nine hundred and ninety-nine out 
of every thousand of Adam’s descendants, and discovered some- 
what to his satisfaction that when he could once rid his mind 
of its old superstition that every one was looking at him, it 
mattered very little whether the burden carried were a deal 
trunk or a Downing-street dispatch-box. 

His employer’s lodgings were in St. Paul’s Church-yard. 
Lancelot set the trunk down inside the door. 

‘ What do you charge V 

‘ Sixpence.’ 

Barnakill looked him steadily in the face, gave him the six- 
pence, went in and shut the door. 

Lancelot wandered down the street, half amused at the sim 
pie test which had just been applied to him, and yet sickened 
with disappointment ; for he had cherished a mysterious fancy 
that with this strange being all his hopes of future activity 
were bound up. Tregarva’s month was nearly over, and yet no 
tidings of him had come. Mellot had left London on some 
mysterious errand of the prophet’s, and for the first time in his 
life he seemed to stand utterly alone. He was at one polo, and 
the whole universe at the other. It was in vain to tell himself 
that his own act had placed l^m there ; that he had friends to 
whom he might appeal. He would not, he dare not accept 
outward help, even outward friendship, however hearty and 
sincere, at that crisis of his existence. It seemed a desecration 
of its awfulness to find comfort in any thing but the highest 
and the deepest. And the glimpse of that which he had at- 
tained seemed to have passed away from him again, — seemed 
to be something which, as it had arisen with Argemone, was 
lost V ith her also, — one speck of the far blue sky which the 


’jhe shadow of death. 


2G3 


rolling clouds had covered in again. As he passed under the 
shadow of the huge soot-blackened cathedral, and looked at its 
grim spiked railings and closed doors, it seemed to him a sym- 
bol of the spiritual world clouded and barred from him. He 
stopped and looked up, and tried to think. The rays of the 
setting sun lighted up in clear radiance the huge cross on the 
summit. Was it an omen ? Lancelot thought so ; but at that 
instant he felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked round. It 
was that strange man again. 

‘ So far well,’ said he. ‘ You are making a better day’s work 
than you fancy, and earning more wages. For instance, here 
is a packet for you.’ 

Lancelot seized it, trembling, and tore it open. It was di- 
rected in Honoria’s handwriting. 

‘ Whence had you this ?’ said he. 

‘Through Mellot, through whom I can return your answer, 
if one be needed.’ 

The letter was significant of Honoria’s character. It busied 
itself entirely about facts, and showed the depth of her sorrow 
by making no allusion to it. ‘Argemone, as Lancelot was 
probably aware, had bequeathed to him the whole of her own 
fortune at Mrs. Lavington’s death, and had directed that various 
precious things of hers should be delivered over to him imme- 
diately. Her mother, however, kept her chamber under lock 
and key, and refused to allow an article to be removed from its 
accustomed place. It was natural in the first burst of her sor- 
row, and Lancelot would pardon.’ All his drawings and letters 
had been, by Argemone’s desire, placed with her in her coffin. 
Honoria had been only able to obey her in sending a favorite 
ring of hers, and with it the last stanzas which she had com- 
posed before her death : — 

Twin stars, aloft in ether clear, 

Around each other roll alway. 

Within one common atmosphere 
Of their own mutual light and day. 


264 


THE VALLEY OF 


And myriad happy eyes are bent 
U poll their changeless love alway ; 

As, strengthened by their one intent, 

They pour the flood of life and day, 

So we, through this world’s waning night, 

Shall, hand in hand, pursue our way ; 

Shed round us order, love, and light. 

And shine unto the perfect day. 

The precious relic, with all its shattered hopes, came at the 
right moment to soften his hard-worn heart. The sight, the 
touch of it, shot like an electric spark through the black stifling 
thunder-cloud of his soul, and dissolved it in refreshing showers 
of tears. 

Barnakill led him gently within the area of the railings, where 
he might conceal his emotion, and it was but a few seconds be- 
fore Lancelot had recovered his self-possession, and followed him 
up the steps through the wicket-door. 

They entered. The afternoon service was proceeding. The 
organ droned sadly in its iron cage, to a few musical amateurs. 
Some nursery-maids and foreign sailors stared about within the 
spiked felons’ dock which shut off the body of the cathedral, 
and tried in vain to hear what was going on inside the choir. 
As a wise author — a Protestant, too — has lately said, ‘ the scan- 
ty service rattled in the vast building, like a dried kernel too 
small for its shell.’ The place breathed imbecility, and unreali- 
ty, and sleepy life-in-death, while the whole nineteenth century 
went roaring on its way outside. And as Lancelot thought, 
though only as a dilettante^ of old St. Paul’s, the morning star 
and focal beacon of England through centuries and dynasties, 
from old Augustine and Mellitus, up to those Paul’s Cross ser- 
mons whose thunders shook thrones, and to noble Wren’s mas- 
ter-piece of art, he asked, ‘ Whither all this ? Coleridge’s dic- 
tum, that a cathedral is a petrified religion, may be taken to 
bear more meanings than one. When will life return to this 
cathedral system ?’ 


THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 


205 


* When was it ever a living system V answered the other. 
‘When was it ever any thing but a transitionary makeshift, 
since the dissolution of the monasteries V 

‘ Why, then, not away with it at once V 

‘ You English have not done with it yet. At all events it is 
keeping your cathedrals rain-proof for you, till you can put them 
to some better use than now.’ 

‘ And in the mean time 

‘ In the mean time there is life enough in them ; life that will 
wake the dead some day. Do you hear what those choristers 
are chanting now V 

^Not I,’ said Lancelot; ‘nor any one round us, I should 
think.’ 

‘ That is our own fault, after all ; for we were not good church- 
men enough to come in time for vespers.’ 

‘ Are you a churchman, then ?’ 

‘Yes, thank God. There may be other churches than those 
of Europe or Syria, and right Catholic ones, too. But shall I 
tell you what they are singing ? ‘ He hath put down the migh- 

ty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. lie 
hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath 
sent empty away.’ Is there no life, think you, in those words, 
spoken here every afternoon in the name of God ?’ 

‘ By hirelings, who neither care nor understand — ’ 

‘Hush. Be not hasty with imputations of evil, within walls 
dedicated to and preserved by the All-good. Even should the 
speakere forget the meaning of their own words, to my sense, 
perhaps, that may just now leave the words more entirely God’s, 
At all events, confess that whatever accidental husks may have 
clustered round it, here is a germ of Eternal Truth. No, I dare 
not despair of you English, as long as I hear your priesthood 
forced by Providence, even in spite of themselves, thus to speak 
God’s words about an age in which the condition of the poor, 
and the rights and duties of man, are becoming the rallying 
point for all thought and all organization.’ 

M 


2G0 


THE VALLEY OF 


‘ But does it not make the case more hopeless that such 
words have been spoken for centuries, and no man regards 
them V 

‘ You have to blame for that, the people, rather than the 
priest. As they are, so will he be, in every age and country. 
He is but the index which the changes of their spiritual state 
move up and down the scale ; and as they will become in Eng- 
land in the next half-century, so will he become also.’ 

‘ And can these dry bones live V asked Lancelot, scornfully. 

‘ Who are you to ask ? What were you three months ago ? 
for I know well your story. But do you remember what the 
prophet saw in the Valley of Vision ? How first that those 
same dry bones shook and clashed together, as if uneasy be- 
cause they were disorganized ; and how they then found flesh 
and stood upright : and yet there was no life in them, till at 
last the Spirit came down and entered into them ? Surely there 
is shaking enough among the bones now ! It is happening to 
the body of your England as it did to Adam’s after he was 
made. It lay on earth, the rabbis say, forty days before the 
breath of life was put into it, and the devil came and kicked it ; 
and it sounded hollow, as England is doing now ; but that did 
not prevent the breath of life coming in good time, nor will it in 
England’s case.’ 

Lancelot looked at him with a puzzled face. 

‘ You must not speak in such deep parables 'o so young a 
learner.’ 

* Is my parable so hard, then ? Look around you and see 
what is the characteristic of your country and of your genera- 
tion at this moment. What a yearning, what an expectation, 
amid infinite falsehoods and confusions, of some nobler, more 
chivalrous, more god-like state ! Your very costermonger trolls 
out his belief that ‘ there’s a good time coming,’ and the hearts 
of yamins^ as well as millenarians, answer, ‘ True !’ Is not that 
a clashing among the dry bones ? And as for flesh, what new 
materials are springing up among you every month, spiritual 


THE SHADOW OF DEArH, 


2G7 


and physical, for a state such as ‘ eye hath not seen, nor ear 
heard !’ — railroads, electric telegraphs, associate-lodging-houses, 
club-houses, sanitary reforms, experimental schools, chemical 
agriculture, a matchless school of inductive science, an equally 
matchless school of naturalist painters, — and all this in the very 
workshop of the world ! Look, again, at the healthy craving 
after religious art and ceremonial, — the strong desire to preserve 
that which has stood the test of time ; and, on the other hand, 
at the manful resolution of your middle classes to stand or fall 
by the Bible alone, — to admit no innovations in worship which 
are empty of instinctive meaning. Look at the enormous 
amount of practical benevolence which now struggles in vain 
against evil, only because it is as yet private, desultory, divided. 
How dare you, young man, despair of your own nation, while 
its nobles can produce a Carlisle, an Ellesmere, an Ashley, a 
Robert Grosvenor — while its middle classes can beget a Fara- 
day, a Stevenson, a BrookC) Elizabeth Fry? See, I say, 
what a chaos of noble materials is here, — -ail confused, it is true, 
--polarized, jarring, and chaotic, — here bigotry, tl ''re self-will, 
superstition, sheer Atheism often, but only waiting for the one 
inspiring Spirit to organize, and unite, and consecrate this chaos 
into the noblest polity the world ever saw realized ! What a 
destiny may be that of your land, if you have but the faith to 
see your own honor ! Were I not of my own country, I would 
be an Englishman this day.’ 

‘ And what is your country V asked Lancelot. ‘ It should be 
a noble one which breeds such men as you.’ 

The stranger smiled. 

‘ Will you go thither with me ?’ 

‘ Why not ? I long for travel, and truly I am sick of my 
own country. When the Spirit of which you speak,’ he went 
on, bitterly, ‘ shall descend, I may return ; till then Englandds 
no place for the penniless.’ 

‘ How know you that the Spirit is not even now poured outi 
Must your English Pharisees and Sadducees, too, have signs and 


268 


THE VALLEY OF 


wonders ere they believe ? Will man never know that ‘ the 
kingdom of God comes not by observation V that now, as ever, 
His promise stands true, — ‘Lo! I am with you al way, even 
unto the end of the world V How many inspired hearts even 
now may be cherishing in secret the idea which shall reform 
the age, and fulfill at once the longings of every sect and rank V 

‘ Name it to me, then.’ 

‘Who can name it? Who can even see it, but those who 
are like Him from whom it comes ? Them a long and stern 
discipline awaits. Would you be of them, you must, like the 
Highest who ever trod this earth, go fasting into the wilderness, 
and, among the wild beasts, stand alone face to face with the 
powers of Nature.’ 

‘ I will go where you shall bid me. I will turn shepherd 
among the Scottish mountains — live as an anchorite in the 
solitudes of Dartmoor. But to what purpose ? I have lis- 
tened long to Nature’s voice, but even the whispers of a spiritual 
presence which haunted my childhood have died away, and I 
he.' nothing in her but the grinding of the iron wheels of me- 
chanical necessity.’ 

‘ Which is the will of God. Henceforth you shall study, not 
Nature, but Him. Yet as for place — I do not like your Eng- 
lish primitive formations, where Earth, worn out with struggling, 
has fallen wearily asleep. No, you shall rather come to Asia, 
the oldest and yet the youngest continent, — to our volcanic 
mountain ranges, where her bosom still heaves with the creative 
energy of youth, around the primeval cradle of the most ancient 
race of men. Then, when you have learnt the wondrous harmony 
between man and his dwelling-place, I will lead you to a land 
where you shall see the highest spiritual cultivation in trium- 
phant contact with the fiercest energies of matter ; where men 
have learnt to tame and use alike the volcano and the human 
heart, where the body and the spirit, the beautiful and the use- 
ful, the human and the divine, are no longer separate, and men 


THE SHADOW OP DEATH. 


269 


have embodied to themselves on earth an image of the ‘ city 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.’ ’ 

‘ Where is this land ?’ said Lancelot, eagerly. 

‘ Poor human nature must have its name for every thing. 
You have heard of the country of Prester John, that myste- 
rious Christian empire, rarely visited by European eye V 

‘ There are legends of two such,’ said Lancelot, ‘ an Ethiopian 
and an Asiatic one ; and the Ethiopian, if we are to believe 
Colonel Harris’s journey to Shoa, is a sufficiently miserable 
failure.’ 

‘ True ; the day of the Chamitic race is past ; you will not 
say the same of our Caucasian empire. To our race the pres- 
ent belongs, — to England, France, Germany, America, — to us. 
Will you see what we have done, and, perhaps, bring home, 
after long wanderings, a message for your country which may 
help to unravel the tangled web of this strange time ?’ 

‘ I will,’ said Lancelot, ‘ now this moment. And yet, no. 
There is one with whom I have promised to share all future 
weal and woe. Without him I can take no step.’ 

‘ Tregarva V 

‘ Yes — he. What made you guess that I spoke of him V 

‘ Mellot told me of him, and of you, too, six weeks ago. He 
is now gone to fetch him from Manchester. I can not trust 
him here in England yet. The country made him sad ; Lon- 
don has made him mad ; Manchester may make him bad. It 
is too fearful a trial even for his faith. I must take him with us.’ 

* What interest in him ? — not to say, what authority over 
him, have you V 

‘ The same which I have over you. You will come with me ; 
so will he. It is my business, as my name signifies, to save 
the children alive whom European society leaves carelessly and 
ignorantly to die. And as for my power, I come,’ said he, 
with a smile, ‘ from a country which sends no one on its er- 
rands without first thoroughly satisfying itself as to his power 
of fulfilling them.’ 


2Y0 


THE VALLEY OP 


‘ If be goes, I go with you.’ 

‘ And he will go. And yet, think what you do. It is a fear- 
ful journey. They who travel it, even as they came naked out 
of their mother’s womb — even as they return thither, and carry 
nothing with them of all which they have gotten in this life, so 
must those who travel to my land.’ 

‘What? Tregarva? Is he, too, to give up all? I had 
thought that I saw in him a precious possession, one for which 
I would barter all my scholarship, my talents, — ay — my life 
itself.’ 

‘ A possession worth your life ? What then ?’ 

‘ Faith in an unseen God.’ 

‘ Ask him whether he would call that a possession — his own 
Si any sense ?’ 

‘ He would call it a revelation to him.’ 

‘ That is, a taking off the vail from something which v/as 
behind the vail already.’ 

‘ Yes.’ 

'x\nd which may therefore just as really be behind the vail 
in other cases without its presence being suspected.’ 

‘ Certainly.’ 

‘ In what sense, now, is that a possession ? Do you possess 
the sun because you see it? Did Herschel create Uranus by 
discovering it ; or even increase, by an atom, its attraction on 
one particle of his own body ?’ 

‘ Whither is all this tending?’ 

‘ Hither. Tregarva does not possess his Father and his 
Lord ; he is possessed by them.’ 

‘But he would say — and I should believe him — that he has 
seen and known them, not with his bodily eyes, but with his 
soul, heart, imagination — call it what you will. All I know is 
that between him and me there is a great gulf fixed.’ 

‘ What ! seen and known them utterly ? comprehended 
them ? Are they not infinite, incomprehensible ? Can the less 
comprehend the greater?’ 


THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 


271 


‘He knows, at least, enough of them to make him what I 
am not.’ 

‘ That is. He knows something of them. And may not you 
know something of them also ? — Enough to make you what he 
is not?’ 

Lancelot shook his head in silence. 

‘ Suppose that you had met and spoken with your father, 
and loved him when you saw him, and yet were not aware of 
the relation in which vou stood to him, still you would know 
him ?’ 

‘ ISTot the most important thing of all — that he was my father.’ 

‘ Is that the most important thing ? Is it not more important 
that he should know that you were his son ? that he should 
support, guide, educate you, even though unseen? Do you 
not know that some one has been doing that ?’ 

‘ That I have been supported, guided, educated, I know full 
well ; but by whom I know not. And I know, too, that I have 
been punished. And therefore — therefore, I can not free the 
thought of a Him — of a Person — only of a Destiny, of Laws 
and Pow’ers, which have no faces wherewith to frown awful 
wrath upon me ! If it be a Person who has been leading me, 
I must go mad, or know that He has forgiven me !’ 

‘ I conceive that it is He, and not punishment, which you 
fear ?’ 

Lancelot was silent a moment ‘Yes, He, and not 

hell at all, is what I fear. He can inflict no punishment on me 
worse than the inner hell which I have felt already, many and 
many a time.’ 

‘Bona verba! That is an awful thing to say; brt betlei 
this extreme than the other And you would wjat?’ 

‘ Be pardoned.’ 

‘ If He loves you. He has pardoned you already.’ 

‘ How do I know that He loves me ?’ 

‘ How does Tregarva ?’ 

‘ He is a righteous man, and I — 


272 


THE VALLEY OF 


‘Am a sinner. He would, and rightly, call himself the 
same.’ 

‘ But he knows that God loves him — that he is God’s child.’ 

‘ So, then, God did not love him till he caused God to love 
him, by knowing that He loved him ? He was not God’s child 
till he made himself one, by believing that he was one when as 

yet he was not ? I appeal to common sense and logic 

it was revealed to Tregarva that God had been loving him 
while he was yet a bad man. If He loved him, in spite of his 
sin, why should He not have loved you ?’ 

‘ If he had loved me, would He have left me in ignorance 
of himself? For if He be, to know Him is the highest good.’ 

‘ Had He left Treo^arvain ii^n'orance of himself?’ 

‘ No Certainly, Tregarva spoke of his conversion as 

of a turning to one of whom he had known all along, and dis- 
regarded.’ 

‘ Then do you turn, like him, to Him whom you have known 
all along, and disregarded.’ 

‘I?’ 

‘ Yes — you ! If half I have heard and seen of you be true, 
He has been telling you more, and not less, of Himself than 
He does to most men. You, for aught I know, may know” 
more of Him than Tregarva does. The gulf between you and 
him is this: he has obeyed what he knew — and you have 
not.’ .... 

Lancelot paused a moment, then — 

‘ No ! — do not cheat me ! You said once that you were a 
churchman.’ 

‘ So I am. A Catholic of the Catholics. What then ?’ 

‘ Who is He to whom you ask me to turn ? You talk to me 
of Him as my Father; but you talk of Him to men of your 
own creed as The Father. You have mysterious dogmas of a 

Three in One. I know them I have admired them. In 

all their forms — in the Vedas, in the Neo-Platonists, in Jacob 
BoShmen, in your Catholic creeds, in Coleridge, and the Ger« 


THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 


273 


mans from whom he borrowed, I have looked at them, and 
found in them beautiful phantasms of philosophy, .... all 
but scientific necessities ; . . . . but ’ 

‘ But what ?’ 

‘ I do not want cold abstract necessities of logic : I want liw 
ing practical facts. If those mysterious dogmas speak of real 
and necessary properties of His being, they must be necessarily 
interwoven in practice with His revelation of Himself.’ 

‘ Most true. But how would you have Him unvail Him- 
self?’ 

‘By unvailing Himself.’ 

‘ What ? To your simple intuition ? That was Semele’s am- 
bition You recollect the end of that myth. You recol- 

lect, too, as you have read the Neo-Platonists, the result of their 
similar attempt.’ 

‘ Idolatry and magic.’ 

‘ True ; and yet, such is the ambition of man, you who were 
just now envying Tregarva, are already longing to climb even 
higher than Saint Thei’esa.’ 

‘ I do not often indulge in such an ambition. But I have read 
in your Schoolmen tales of a Beatific Vision; how that the 
highest good for man was to see God.’ 

‘ And did you believe that ?’ 

‘ One can not believe the impossible — only regret its impossi- 
bility.’ 

‘Impossibility? You can only see the Uncreate in the Create 
—the Infinite in the Finite — the absolute good in that which 
is like the good. Does Tregarva pretend to more? He sees 
God in his own thoughts and consciousness, and in the events 
of the w'orld around him, imaged in the mirror of his own mind. 
Is your mirror, then, so much narrower than his ?’ 

‘I have none. I see but myself, and the world, and far above 
thsm, a dim awful Unity, which is but a notion.’ 

‘ Fool !— and slow of heart to believe ! Where else would 
you see Him, but in yourself and in the world ? They are all 

M* 


274 


THE VALLEY OF 


cognizable to you. Where else, but everywhere, would you see 
Him whom no man hath seen, or can see V 

‘ When He shows Himself to me in them, then I may see 
him. But now ’ 

‘ You have seen Him ; and because you do not know the 
name of what you see — or rather will not acknowledge it — you 
fancy that it is not there.’ 

‘ How, in His name ? What have I seen V 

‘ Ask yourself. Have you not seen, in your fancy, at least, 
an ideal of man, for which you spurned (for Mellot has told me 
all) the merely negative angelic — the merely receptive and in- 
dulgent feminine-ideals of humanity, and longed to be a man 
like that ideal and perfect man V 

‘ I have.’ 

‘ And what was your misery all along ? Was it not that you 
felt you ought to be a person, with a one inner unity, a one 
practical will, purpose, and business given to you — not invented 
by yourself — in the great order and harmony of the universe, — 
and that you were not one ? — That your self-willed fancies, and 
self-pleasing passions, had torn you in pieces, and left you in- 
consistent, dismembered, helpless, purposeless? That, in short, 
you are below your ideal, just in proportion as you were not a 
person ?’ 

‘ God knows, you speak truth !’ 

‘Then must not that ideal of humanity be a person himself? 
— Else how can he be the ideal man ? Where is your logic ? 
An impersonal ideal of a personal species ! . . . . And what is 
the most special peculiarity of man ? Is it not that he alone of 
creation is a son, with a Father to love and to obey ? Then 
must not the ideal man be a son also ? And last, but not least, 
is it not the very property of man that he is a spirit invested 
with flesh and blood ? Then must not the ideal man have, 
once at least, taken on himself flesh and blood also ? Else, how 
could he fulfill his own idea ?’ 

‘Yes . . .Yes . . .That thought, too, has glanced through 


THE SHADOW OF DEATH., 


275 


Diy mind at moments, like a lightning-flash ; till I have envied 
the old Greeks their faith in a human Zeus, son of Kronos — a 
human Phoibos, son of Zeus. But I could not rest in them. 
They are noble. But are they — are any — perfect ideals ? The 
one thing I did, and do, and will believe, is the one which they 
do not fulfill — that man is meant to be the conqueror of the 
earth, matter, nature, decay, death itself, and to conquer them, 
as Bacon says, by obeying them.’ 

‘ Hold it fast ; — but follow it out, and say boldly, the ideal 
■of humanity must be one who has conquered nature — one who 
rules the universe — and who has vanquished death itself ; and 
conquered them, as Bacon says, not by violating, but by sub- 
mitting to them. Have you never heard of one who is said to 
have done this ? How do you know, that in this ideal which 
you have seen, you have not seen the Son — The perfect Man, 
who died and rose again, and sits forever Healer, and Lord, and 
Ruler of the universe ? . . . . Stay — do not answer me. Have 
you not, besides, had dreams of an All-Father — from whom, in 
some mysterious way, all things and beings must derive their 
source, and that Son — ^if my theory be true — among the rest, and 
above all the rest V 

‘Who has not? But what more dim or distant — more 
drearily, hopelessly notional, than that thought ?’ 

‘ Only the thought that there is none. But the dreariness 
was only in your own inconsistency. If He be the Father of 
all, he must be the Father of pei*sons — He Himself therefore a 
person. He must be the Father of all in whom dwell personal 
qualities, power, wisdom, creative energy, love, justice, pity. 
Can He be their Father, unless all these very qualities are in- 
finitely His ? Does he now look so terrible to you ?’ 

‘I have had this dream, too; but I turned away from it in 
dread.’ 

‘ Doubtless you did. Some day you will know why. Does 
that former dream of a human Son relieve this dream of none 
of its awfulness ? May not the type be beloved for the sake of 


276 


THE VALLEY OF 


its Antitype, even if the very name of All-Father is no guarantee 
for His paternal pity ? . . . . But you have had this dream. 
How know you, that in it you were not allowed a glimpse, 
however dim and distant, of Him whom the Catholics call The 
Father ?’ 

‘ It may be ; but ’ 

‘ Stay again. Had you never the sense of a Spirit in you — 
a will, an energy, an inspiration, deeper than the region of 
consciousness and reflection, which, like the wind, blew where it 
listed, and you heard the sound of it ringing through your 
whole consciousness, and yet knew not whence it came, or 
whither it went, or why it drove you on to dare and suffer, to 
love and hate ; to be a fighter, a sportsman, an artist ’ 

‘And a drunkard!’ added Lancelot, sadly. 

‘ And a drunkard. But did it never seem to you, that this 
fjtrange wayward spirit, if any thing, was the very root and 
core of your own personality ? And had you never a craving 
for the help of some higher, mightier spirit, to guide and 
strengthen yours ; to regulate and civilize its savage and spas- 
modic self-will ; to teach you your rightful place in the great 
order of the universe around ; to fill you with a continuous 
purpose, and with a continuous will to do it? Have you 
never had a dream of an Inspirer ? — a spirit of all spirits V 

Lancelot turned away with a shudder. 

‘ Talk of any thing but that ! Little you know — and yet you 
seem to know every thing — the agony of craving with which 
I have longed for guidance ; the rage and disgust which 
possessed me when I tried one pretended teacher after another, 
and found in myself depths which their spirits could not, or 
rather would not, touch. I have been irreverent to the false, 
from very longing to worship the true ; I have been a rebel to 
sham leaders, for very desire to be loyal to a real one ; I have 
envied my poor cousin his Jesuits; I have envied my own 
pointers their slavery to my whip and whistle ; I have fled, as 
a last resource, to brandy and opium, for the inspiration which 


THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 


277 


neither man nor demon would bestow .... Then I found 
.... you know my story .... And when I looked to her 
to guide and inspire me, behold ! I found myself, by the very 
laws of humanity, compelled to guide and inspire her ; — blind, 
to lead the blind ! — Thank God, for her sake, that she was taken 
from me !’ 

‘ Did you ever mistake these substitutes, even the noblest of 
them, for reality ? Did not your very dissatisfaction with them 
show you that the true inspirer ought to be, if he were to 
satisfy your cravings, a person, truly — else how could he in- 
spire and teach you, a person yourself? — but an utterly infinite, 
omniscient, eternal person ? How know you that in that dream 
He w^as not unvailing Himself to you — He, The Spirit, who is 
the Lord and Giver of Life ; The Spirit, who teaches men their 
duty and relation to those above, around, beneath them ; The 
Spirit of order, obedience, loyalty, brotherhood, mercy, con- 
descension V 

‘ But I never could distinguish these dreams from each other • 
the moment that I essayed to separate them, I seemed to break 
up the thought of an absolute one ground of all things, with- 
out which the universe would have seemed a piecemeal chaos ; 
and they receded to infinite distance, and became transparent, 
barren, notional shadows of my own brain, — even as your 
words are now.’ 

‘ How know you that you were meant to distinguish them ? 
How know you that that very impossibility was not the testi- 
mony of fact and experience to that old Catholic dogma, for the 
sake of which you just now shrank from my teaching ? I say 
that this is so. How do you know that it is not V 

‘ But how do I know that it is ? I want proof.’ 

‘ And you are the man who was, five minutes ago, crying out 
for practical facts, and disdaining cold abstract necessities of 
logic ! Can you prove that your body exists ?’ 

‘No. 

‘ Can you prove that your spirit exists V 


278 


THE VALLEY OF 


‘No.’ 

‘ And yet know that they both exist. And how V 

‘ Solvitur ainbulando.’ 

‘ Exactly. When you try to prove either of them without 
the other, you fail. You arrive, if at any thing, at some barren 
polar notion. By action alone you prove the mesothetic tact 
which underlies and unites them.’ 

‘ Quorsum haec V 

‘ Hither. I am not going to demonstrate the indemonstra- 
ble — to give you intellectual notions, which, after all, will be 
but reflexes of my own peculiar brain, and so add the green of 
my spectacles to the orange of yours, and make night hideous 
by fresh monsters. I may help you to think yourself into a 
theoretical Tritheism, or a theoretical Sabellianism ; I can not 
make you think yourself into practical and living Catholicism. 
As you of anthropology, so I say of theology, — Solvitur ambu- 
lando. Don’t believe Catholic doctrine unless you like ; faith 
is free. But see if you can reclaim either society or yourself 
without it; see if He will let you reclaim them. Take Catho- 
lic doctrine for granted ; act on it ; and see if you will not re- 
claim them !’ 

‘ Take for granted ? Am I to come, after all, to implicit 
faith V 

‘Implicit fiddlesticks ! Did you ever read the Novum Or- 
gan um ? Mel lot told me that you were a geologist.’ 

‘ Well V 

‘ You took for granted what you read in geological books, 
and went to the mine and the quarry afterward, to verify it in 
practice ; and according as you found fact correspond to the- 
ory, you retained or rejected. Was that implicit faith, or 
common sense, common humility, and sound induction V 

‘ Sound induction, at least.’ 

‘ Then go now, and do likewise. Believe that the learned, 
wise, and good, for 1800 years, may possibly have found out 
somewhat, or have been taught somewhat, on this matter, and 


THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 


279 


test their theory by practice. If a theory on such a point is 
worth any thing at all, it is omnipotent and all-explaining. If 
it will not work, of course there is no use keeping it a moment. 
Perhaps it will work. I say it will.’ 

‘ But I shall not work it ; I still dread my own spectacles. I 
dare not trust myself alone to verify a theory of Murchison’s 
or Lyell’s. How dare I trust myself in this V 

‘Then do not trust yourself alone ; come and see what others 
are doing. Come, and become a member of a body which is 
verifying, by united action, those universal and eternal truths, 
which are too great for the grasp of any one time-ridden indi- 
vidual. Hot that we claim the gift of infallibility, any more 
than I do that of perfect utterance of the little which we do 
know.’ 

‘ Then what do you promise me in asking me to go with 
you V 

‘ Practical proof that these my words are true, — practical proof 
that they can make a nation all that England might be, and is 
not, — the sight of what a people may become, who knowing 
thus far, do what they know. We believe no more than you, 
but we believe it. Come and see ! — And yet you will not see ; 
facts, and the reasons of them, will be as impalpable to you 
there as here, unless you can again obey your Novum Or- 
ganum.’ 

‘How then V 

‘ By renouncing all your idols — the idols of the race and of 
the market, of the study and of the theater. Every national 
prejudice, every vulgar superstition, every remnant of pedantic 
system, every sentimental like or dislike, must be left behind 
you, for the induction of the world-problem. You must empty 
yourself, before God will fill you.’ 

‘ Of what can I strip myself more ? I know nothing ; I 
can do nothing; I hope nothing; I fear nothing; I am noth- 
ing.’ 

‘And you would gain something. But for what purpose? 


280 


THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 


—for on that depends your whole success. To be famous, great, 
glorious, powerful, beneficent?’ 

‘ As I live, the height of my ambition, small though it be, 
is only to 6nd my place, though it were but as a sweeper of 
chimneys. If I dare wish — if I dare choose, it would be only 
this — to regenerate one little parish in the whole world. . . . 
To do that, and die, for aught I care, without ever being recog- 
nized as the author of my own deeds .... to hear them, if 
need be, imputed to another, and myself accursed as a fool, if 
I can but atone for the sins of . . . .’ 

He paused ; but his teacher understood him. 

‘ It is enough,’ he said. ‘ Come with me ; Tregarva waits for 
us near. Again I warn you ; you will hear nothing new ; you 
shall only see what you, and all around you, have known and 
not done, known and done. We have no peculiar doctrines or 
systems ; the old creeds are enough for us. But we have 
obeyed the teaching which we received in each and every age, 
and allowed ourselves to be built up, generation by generation 
— as the rest of Christendom might have done — into a living 
temple, on the foundation which is laid already, and othei than 
which no man can lay.’ 

‘ And what is that ?’ 

‘ Jesus Christ— THE MAN.’ 

He took Lancelot by the hand. A peaceful warmth diffused 
itself over his limbs ; the droning of the organ sounded fainter 
and more faint ; the marble monuments grew dim and distant ; 
and, half unconsciously, he followed like a child through the 
cathedral door. 


EPILOGUE. 


I CAN foresee many criticisms, and those not unreasonable 
ones, on this little book — let it be some excuse at least for me, 
that I have foreseen them. Leaders will complain, I doubt not, 
of the very mythical and mysterious denouement of a story 
which began by things so gross and palpable as field-sports and 
pauperism. But is it not true, that sooner or later, ‘ omnia ex- 
eunt in mysterium V Out of mystery we all come at our birth, 
fox-hunters and paupers, sages and saints ; into mystery we 
shall all return .... at all events, when we die ; probably, as 
it seems to me, some of us will return hither before we die. 
For if the signs of the times mean any thing, they portend, I 
humbly submit, a somewhat mysterious and mythical denoue- 
ment to this very age^ and to those struggles of it which I 
have herein attempted, clumsily enough, to sketch. We are 
entering fast, I both hope and fear, into the region of prodigy, 
true and false ; and our great-grandchildren will look back on 
the latter half of this century, and ask, if it were possible that 
such things could happen in an organized planet ? The Ben- 
thamites will receive this announcement, if it meets their eyes, 
with shouts of laughter. Be it so ... . nous verrons . . . . 
In the year 1847, if they will recollect, they were congratulating 
themselves on the nations having grown too wise to go to war 
any more .... and in 1848 ? So it has been from the begin- 
ning. What did philosophes expect in 1792? What did 


282 


EPILOGUE. 


they see in 1793 ? Popery was to be eternal : but the Refor- 
mation came nevertheless. Rome was to be eternal : but Alaric 
came. Jerusalem was to be eternal : but Titus came. Gomor- 
rha was to be eternal, I doubt not : but the fire-floods came. 
. . . ‘ As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days 
of the Son of man. They were eating, drinking, marrying and 
giving in marriage ; and the flood came, and swept them all 
away.’ Of course they did not expect it. They went on saying, 
‘ Where is the promise of His coming ? For all things continue 
as they were from the beginning.’ Most true ; but what if 
they were from the beginning — over a volcano’s mouth ? What 
if the method whereon things have proceeded since the creation 
were, as geology as well as history proclaims — a cataclysmic 
method? What then? Why should not this age, as all 
others like it have done, end in a cataclysm, and a prodigy, 
and a mystery ? And why should not my little book do likewise ? 

Again — Readers will probably complain of the fragmentary 
and unconnected form of the book. Let them first be sure that 
that is not an integral feature of the subject itself, and therefore 
the very form the book should take. Do not young men think, 
speak, act, just now, in this very incoherently fragmentary way ; 
without methodic education or habits of thought ; with the 
various stereotyped systems which they have received by tra- 
dition, breaking up under them like ice in a thaw ; with a 
thousand facts and notions, which they know not how to clas- 
sify, pouring in on them like a flood ? — a very Yeasty state of 
mind altogether, like a mountain burn in a spring rain, carrying 
down with it stones, sticks, peat-water, addle grouse-eggs, and 
drowned king-fishers, fertilizing salts and vegetable poisons — 
not, alas ! without a large crust, here and there, of sheer froth. 
Yet no heterogeneous confused flood-deposit, no fertile meadows 
below. And no high water, no fishing. It is in the long 
black droughts, when the water is foul from lowness, and not 
from height, that Hydras and Desmidiae, and Rotifers, and all 
uncouth pseud-organisms, bred of putridity, begin to multiply, 


EPILOGUE. 


283 


and the fish are sick for want of a fresh, and the cunningest 
artificial fly is of no avail, and the shrewdest angler will do 
nothing — except with a gross fleshly gilt-tailed worm, or the 
cannibal bait of roe, whereby parent fishes, like competitive 
barbarisms, devour each other’s flesh and blood — perhaps their 
own. It is when the stream is clearing after a flood, that the 
fish will rise .... When will the flood clear, and the fish 
come on the feed again ? 

Next ; I shall be blamed for liaving left untold the fate of 
those characters who have acted throughout as Lancelot’s 
satellites. But indeed their only purpose consisted in their in- 
fluence on his development, and that of Tregarva ; I do not 
see that we have any need to follow them further. The reader 
can surely conjecture their history for himself .... He may 
be pretty certain that they have gone the way of the world 
.... abierunt ad plures .... for this life or for the next. 
They have done — very much what he or I might have done 
in their place — nothing. Nature brings very few of her chil- 
dren to perfection, in these days or any other .... And for 
Grace, which does bring its children to perfection, the quantity 
and quality of the perfection must depend on the quantity and 
quality of the grace, and that again, to an awful extent — The 
Giver only knows to how great an extent — on the will of the 
recipients, and therefore in exact proportion to their lowness in 
the human scale, on the circumstances which environ them. 
So my characters are now — very much what the reader might 
expect them to be. I confess them to be unsatisfactory ; so are 
most things : but how can I solve problems which fact has not 
yet solved for me ? How am I to extricate my antitypal char- 
acters, when their living types have not yet extricated them- 
selves ? When the age moves on, my story shall move on 
with it. Let it be enough that my puppets have retreated in 
good order, and that I am willing to give to those readers who 
have conceived something of human interest for them, the latest 
accounts of their doings. 


284 


EPILOGUE. 


With the exception, that is, of Mellot and Sabina. Them I 
confess to be an utterly mysterious, fragmentary little couple. 
Why not ? Do you not meet with twenty such in the course 
of 5^our life ? — Charming people, who for aught you know may 
be opera-folk from Paris, or emissaries from the Czar, cr dis 
guised Jesuits, or disguised Angels .... who evidently ‘ have 
a history,’ and a strange one, which you never expect or at- 
tempt to fathom ; who interest you intensely for a while, and 
then are whirled away again *in the great world-waltz, and 
lost in the crowd forever ? Why should you wish my story 
to be more complete than theirs is, or less romantic than theirs 
may be ? There are more things in London, as well as in 
heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in our philosophy. If 
you but knew the secret history of that dull gentleman opposite 
whom you sat at dinner yesterday ! — the real thoughts of that 
chattering girl whom you took down ! — ‘ Omnia exeunt in m 3 ^s- 
terium,’ I say again. Every human being is a romance, a 
miracle to himself ; and will appear as one to all the world in 
That Day. 

But now for the rest ; and Squire Lavington first. He is a 
very fair sample of the fate of the British public ; for he is dead 
and buried : and readers would not have me extricate him out 
of that situation ? If you ask news of the reason and manner 
of his end, I can only answer, that like many others, he went 
out — as candles do. I believe he expressed general repentance 
for all his sins — all, at least, of which he was aware. To con- 
fess and repent of the state of the Whitford Priors’ estate, and 
of the poor thereon, was of course more than any minister, of 
any denomination whatsoever, could be required to demand of 
him ; seeing that would have involved a recognition of those 
duties of property, of which the good old gentleman was to the 
ast a stanch denier ; and which are as yet seldom supposed 
to be included in any Christian creed. Catholic or other. Two 
sermons were preached in Whitford on the day of his funeral ; 
one by Mr. O’Blareaway, on the text from Job provided for 


EPILOGUE. 


285 


such occasions ; ‘ When the ear heard him, then it blessed 
him,’ &c. &c. : the other by the Baptist preacher, on two verses 
of the forty-ninth Psalm — 

‘ They fancy that their houses shall endure forever, and call 
the lands after their own names. 

‘ Yet man being in honor hath no understanding, but is com- 
pared to the beasts that perish.’ 

Waiving the good taste, which was probably on a par in both 
cases, the reader is left to decide which of the two texts was 
most applicable. 

Mrs. Lavington is Mrs. Lavington no longer. She has niar- 
ried, to the astonishment of the world in general, that ‘ excel- 
lent man,’ Mr. O’Blareaway, who has been discovered not to be 
quite as young as he appeared, his graces being principally 
owing to a Brutus wig, which he has now wisely discarded. 
Mrs. Lavington now sits in state under her husband’s ministry, 
as the leader of the religious world in the fashionable watering- 
place of Steamingbath, and derives her notions of the past, 
present, and future state of the universe principally from those 
two meek and unbiased periodicals, the Protestant Hue-and- 
Cry and the Christian Satirist, to both of which O’Blareaway is 
a constant contributor. She has taken such an aversion to 
Whitford since Argemone’s death, that she has ceased to have 
any connection with that unhealthy locality, beyond the popu- 
lar and easy one of rent-receiving. O’Blareaway has never en- 
tered the parish to his knowledge since Mr. Lavington’s funeral ; 
and was much pleased, the last time I rode with him, at ray 
informing him that a certain picturesque moorland which he 
had been greatly admiring, was his own possession .... After 
all, he is ‘ an excellent man ;’ and when I met a large party at 
his house the other day, and beheld dory and surmullet, cham- 
pagne and lachryma Christi, amid all the glory of the Whitford 
plate .... (some of it said to have belonged to the altar of 
the Priory church four hundred years ago), I was deeply moved 
by the impressive tone in which at the end of a long grace, ho 


286 


EPILOGUE. 


prayed ‘ that the daily bread of our less-favored brethren might 
be mercifully vouchsafed to them.’ .... My dear readers, 
would you have me, even if I could, extricate him from such an 
Elysium by any denouement whatsoever ? 

Poor dear Luke, again, is said to be painting lean frescoes 
for the Something-or-other-Kirche at Munich ; and the vicar, 
under the name of Father Stylites, of the order of St. Phi- 
lumena, is preaching impassioned sermons to crowded congre- 
gations at St. George’s, Bedlam. How can I extricate them 
from that ? No one has come forth of it yet, to my knowledge, 
except by paths whereof I shall use Lessing’s saying, ‘ I may 
have my whole hand full of truth, and yet find good to open 
only my little finger.’ But who cares for their coming out ? 
They are but two more added to the five hundred, at whose 
moral suicide, and dive into the Roman Avernus, a quasi- 
Protestant public looks on with a sort of savage satisfaction, 
crying only ‘ Didn’t we tell you so V — and more than half 
hopes that they will not come back again, lest they should be 
discovered to have learnt any thing while they were there. 
What are two among that five hundred ? much more among 
the five thousand who seem destined shortly to follow them ? 

The banker, thanks to Barnakill’s assistance, is rapidly get 
ting rich again — who would wish to stop him ? However, he 
is wiser, on some points at least, than he was of yore. He has 
taken up the flax movement violently of late — perhaps owing 
to some hint of Barnakill’s — talks of nothing but Chevalier 
Claussen and Mr. Donellan, and is very anxious to advance 
capital to any landlord who will grow flax on Mr. Warnes’s 
method, either in England or Ireland .... John Bull, how- 
ever, has not yet awakened sufficiently to listen to his overtures, 
but sits up in bed, dolefully rubbing his eyes, and bemoaning 
the evanishment of his protectionist dream — altogether realizing 
tolerably, he and his land. Dr. Watts’s well-known moral song 
concerning the sluggard and his garden. 

Lord Minchampstead, again, prospers. Either the nuns of 


EPILOGUE. 


287 


Minch ampstead have left no Nemesis behind them, like those 
of Whitford, or a certain wisdom and righteousness of his, how- 
ever dim and imperfect, averts it for a time. So, as I said, he 
prospers — and is hated ; especially by his farmers, to whom he 
has just offered long leases and a sliding corn-rent. They 
would have hated him just the same if he had kept them at 
rack-rents ; and he has not forgotten that ; but they have. 
They look shy at the leases, because they bind them to farm 
high — which they do not know how to do ; and at the corn- 
rent, because they think that he expects wheat to rise again — 
whicli, being a sensible man, he very probably does. But for 
my story — certainly do not see how to extricate him or any 
one else from farmers’ stupidity, greed, and ill-will. . . . That 
question must have seven years’ more free- trade to settle it, be- 
fore I can say any thing thereon. Still less can I foreshadow 
the fate of his eldest son, who has just been rusticated from 
Christ-church for riding one of Simmons’s hacks through a china- 
shop window ; especially as the youth is reported to be given 
to piquette and strong liquors, and, like many noblemen’s eldest 
sons, is considered ‘ not to have the talent of his hither.’ As 
for the old lord himself, I have no wish to change or develop 
him in any way — except to cut slips off him, as you do off a 
willow', and plant two or three in every county in England. Let 
him alone to work out his own plot .... w^e have not seen 
the end of it yet ; but what ever it will be, England has need 
of him as a transition-stage between feudalism and * * * * 
for many a day to come. If he be not the ideal landlord, he is 
nearer it than any we are like yet to see. . . . 

Except one ; and that, after all, is Lord Vieuxbois. Let him 
go on, like a gallant gentleman as he is, and prosper. And he 
will prosper, for he fears God, and God is with him. He has 
much to learn ; and a little to unlearn. He has to learn that 
God is a living God now', as well as in the middle ages ; to 
learn to trust not in antique precedents, but in eternal laws ; 
to learn that his tenants, just because they are chMdren of God, 


288 


EPILOGUE. 


are not to be kept children, but developed and educated into 
sons ; to learn that God’s grace, like his love, is free, and that 
His spirit bloweth where it listeth, and vindicates its own free- 
will against our narrow systems, by revealing, at times, even to 
nominal Heretics and Infidels, truths which the Catholic Church 
must humbly receive, as the message of Him who is wider, 
deeper, and more tolerant, than even she can be. . . . And he 
is in the way to learn all this. Let him go on. At what con- 
clusions he will attain, he knows not, nor do I. Bnt this I 
know, that he is on the path to great and true couclusions. 

And he is just about to be married, too. 

That surely should teach him something. The p.apers inform 
me that his bride elect is Lord Minch amps tead’s youngest 
daughter. That should be a noble mixture ; there should be 
stalwart offspring, spiritual as well as physical, born of that in- 
termarriage of the old and the new. We ^vill hope it : perhaps 
some of my readers, who enter into my inner meaning, may 
also pray for it. 

Whom have I to account for besides ? Crawy — though some 
of my readei’s my consider the mention of him superfluous. But 
to those who do not, I may impart the news, that last month, 
in the union-workhouse — he died; and may, for aught we 
know, have ere this met Squire Lavington He is sup- 

posed, or at least said, to have had a soul to be saved, ... as 
I think, a body to be saved also. But what is one more among 
so many ? And in an over-peopled country like this, too. . . . 
One must learn to look at things — and paupers — in the mass. 

The poor of Whitford also ? My dear readers, I trust that 
you will not ask me just now to draw the horoscope of the 
Whitford poor, or of any others. Really that depends princi- 
pally on yourselves But for the present, the poor of 

Whitford, owing, as it seems to them and me, to quite other 
causes than an ‘ over-stocked labor market,’ or too rapid ‘ mul- 
tiplication of their species,’ are growing more profligate, reckless, 
pauperized, year by year. O’Blareaway complained sadly to 


EPILOGUE. 


289 


me the other day that the poor-rates were becoming ‘heavier 
and heavier’ — had nearly reached, indeed, what they were under 
the old law 

But there is one who does not complain, but gives, and gives, 
and stints herself to give, and weeps in silence and unseen over 
the evils which she has yearly less and less power to stem. 

For in the darkened chamber of the fine house at Steaming- 
bath, lies on a sofa Honoria Lavington — beautiful no more ; the 
victim of some mysterious and agonizing disease, about which 
the physicians agree on one point only — that it is hopeless. 
The ‘ curse of the Lavingtons’ is on her ; and she bears it. 
There she lies, and prays, and reads, and arranges her charities, 
and writes little books for children, full of the Beloved Name 
which is forever on her lips. She suflfers — none but herself 
knows how much, or how stangely — ^yet she is never heard to 
sigh. She weeps in secret — she has long ceased to plead — ^for 
others, not for herself; and prays for them too — perhaps some 
day her prayers will yet be answered. But she greets all visit-* 
ors with a smile fresh from heaven; and all who enter that 
room leave it saddened, and yet happy, like those who have 
lingered a moment at the gates of paradise, and seen angels 
ascending and descending upon earth. There she lies — who 
could wish her otherwise ? Even Doctor Autotheus Maresnest, 
the celebrated mesmerizer, who, though he laughs at the Res- 
urrection of The Lord, is confidently reported to have raised 
more than one corpse to life himself, was heard to say,- after 
having attended her professionally, that her waking bliss and 
peace, although unfortunately unattributable even to auto-cata- 
lepsy, much less to somnambulist exaltation, was on the whole, 
however unscientific, almost as enviable. 

There she lies — and will lie till she dies — the type of thou- 
sands more, ‘ the martyrs by the pang without the palm,’ who 
rind no mates in this life .... and yet may find them in the 

life to come Poor Paul Tregarva ! Little he fancies 

how her days run by ! . . . 


290 


EPILOGUE. 


At least, there has been no news, since that last scene in St. 
Paul’s Cathedral, either of him or Lancelot. How their strange 
teacher has fulfilled his promise of guiding their education ; 
whether they have yet reached the country of Pres ter John ; 
whether, indeed, that Caucasian Utopia has a local and bodily 
existence, or was only used by Barnakill to shadow out that 
Ideal which is, as he said of the Garden of Eden, always near 
us, underlying the Actual, as the spirit does its body, exhibiting 
itself step by step through all the falsehoods and confusions 
of history and society, giving life to all in it which is not false- 
hood* and decay ; — on all these questions I can give my readers 
no sort of answer ; perhaps I may as yet have no answer to 
give ; perhaps I may be afraid of giving one ; perhaps the times 
themselves are giving, at once cheerfully and sadly, in strange 
destructions and strange births, a better answer than I can give. 
I have set forth, as far as in me lay, the date of my problem ; 
and surely, if the premises be given, wise men will, not have to 
look far for the conclusion. In homely English, I have given 
ray readers Yeast; if they be what I take them for, they will 
be able to bake with it themselves. 

And yet I have brought Lancelot, at least — perhaps Tregarva 
too — to a conclusion, and an all-important one, which, whoso 
reads, may find fairly printed in these pages. Henceforth his 
life must begin anew. Were I to carry on the thread of his 
story continuously, he would still seem to have overleaped as 
vast a gulf as if I had re-introduced him as a gray-haired man. 
Strange ! that the death of one of the lovers should seem no 
complete termination to their history, when their marriage 
would have been accepted by all as the legitimate denouement, 
beyond which no information was to be expected. As if the 
history of love always ended at the altar ! Oftener it only be- 
gins there ; and all before it, is but a mere longing to love. 
Why should readers complain of being refused the future his- 
tory of one life, when they are in most novels cut short by the 
marriage finale from the biography of two ? 


EPILOGUE. 


291 


But if, over and above this, any reader should be wroth at 
niy having left Lancelot’s history unfinished on questions in 
his opinion more important than that of love, let me entreat 
him to set manfully about finishing his own history — a far more 
important one to him than Lancelot’s. If he shall complain 
that doubts are raised for which no solution is given, that my 
hero is brought into contradictory beliefs without present means 
of bringing them to accord, into passive acquiescence in vast 
truths, without seeing any possibility of practically applying 
them — let him consider well whether such be not his own case ; 
let him, if he be as most are, thank God when he finds out that 
such is his case, when he knows at last that those are most 
blind who say they see, when he becomes at last conscious how 
little he believes, how little he acts up to that small belief ! 
Let him try to right somewhat of the doubt, confusion, custom- 
worship, inconsistency, idolatry, within him — some of the greed, 
bigotry, recklessness, respectably superstitious atheism around 
him ; — and perhaps, before his new task is finished, Lancelot 
and Tregarva may have returned with a message, if not for 
him — for that depends upon his having ears to hear it — yet 
possibly for strong Lord Minchampstead, probably for good 
Lord Vieuxbois, and surely for the sinners and the slaves of 
Whitford Priors. What it will be, I know not, altogether ; but 
this I know, that if my heroes go on as they have set forth, 
looking with single mind for some one ground of human right 
and love, some everlasting rock whereon to build, utterly care- 
less what the building may be, howsoever contrary to prejudice, 
and precedent, and the idols of the day, provided God, and 
nature, and the accumulated lessons of all the ages, help thetn 
in its construction — then they will find in time the thing they 
seek, and see how the will of God may at last be done on earth, 
even as it is done in heaven. But alas ! between them and it 
are waste raging waters, foul mud banks, thick with dragons 
and syrens ; and many a bitter day and blinding night, in cold 
and hunger, spiritual, and perhaps physical, await them. For it 


262 


EPILOGUE. 


was a true vision which John Bunyan saw; and one which, as 
the visions of wise men are wont to do, meant far more than 
the seer fancied, when he beheld in his dream that there was 
indeed a Land of Beulah, and Arcadian Shepherd Paradise, on 
whose mountain-tops the everlasting sunshine lay ; but that the 
way to it, as these last three years are preaching to us, went 
past the mouth of Hell, and through the Valley of the Shadow 
of Death. 


THE END. 


CHARLES KINGSLEY’S WORKS 


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vised more apposite to the holidays, or more appropriate for a gift, than 
this charming book. — Chrutian Intelligencer^ N. Y. 

It is handsome in make-up, is beautifully illustrated, and is as interest- 
ing as could be desired. . . . Miss Johnson evidently understands juvenile 
literary needs. — Brooklyn Eagle. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

The above works sent by mail^ postage prepaid^ to any part of the United States 
or Canada, on receipt of the price. 


BEN-HUR: A TALE OF THE CHRIST. 


By Lew. Wallace, New Edition, pp. 552. 16ino, 
Cloth, $1 50. 

Anything so startling, new, and distinctive as the leading feature of this 
romance does not often appear in works of fiction. . . . Some of Mr. Wal- 
lace’s writing is remarkable for its pathetic eloquence. The scenes de- 
scribed in the New Testament are rewritten with the power and skill of 
an accomplished master of style. — W. Y. Times. 

Its real basis is a description of the life of the Jews and Romans at the 
beginning of the Christian era, and this is both forcible and brilliant. . . . 
We are carried through a surprising variety of scenes; we witness a sea- 
fight, a chariot-race, the internal economy of a Roman galley, domestic in- 
teriors at Antioch, at Jerusalem, and among the tribes of the desert; pal- 
aces, prisons, the haunts of dissipated Roman youth, the houses of pious 
families of Israel. There is plenty of exciting incident; everything is 
animated, vivid, and glowing. — W. Y. Tribune. 

From the opening of the volume to the very close the reader’s interest 
will be kept at the highest pitch, and the novel will be pronounced by all 
one of the greatest novels of the day. — Boston Post. 

It is full of poetic beauty, as though born of an Eastern sage, and there 
is sufficient of Oriental custonjs, geography, nomenclature^ etc., to greatly 
strengthen the semblance. — Boston Commonwealth. 

“Ben-IIur” is interesting, and its characterization is fine and strong. 
Meanwhile it evinces careful study of the period in which the scene is laid, 
and will help those who read it with reasonable attention to realize the 
nature and conditions of Hebrew life in Jerusalem and Roman life at 
Antioch at the time of our Saviour’s advent. — Examiner^ N. Y. 

It is really Scripture history of Christ’s time clothed gracefully and 
delicately in the flowing and loose drapery of modern fiction. . . . Few late 
works of fiction excel it in genuine ability and interest. — N. Y. Graphic. 

One of the most remarkable and delightful books. It is as real and 
warm as life itself, and as attractive as the grandest and most lieroic 
chapters of history. — Indianapolis Journal. 

The book is one of unquestionable power, and will be read with un- 
wonted interest by many readers who are weaij of the conventional novel 
and romance. — Boston Journal. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, Hew York. 

jes* The above work sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States 
or Canada, on receipt of the price. 


AT THE RED GLOVE 


A Novel. Illustrated by C. S. Reinhart, pp. 246. 
12nio, Extra Cloth, $1 50. 


We have tried to express our admiration of the brilliant talents which 
the “ Red Glove ” displays — the accurate knowledge shown of localities ; 
the characteristics of the surrounding population, and the instinctive read- 
ing of the inner selves of the various personages who figure in the story. . . . 
A charming idyl. — W. Y. Mail and Express. 

The execution is admirable. . . . The characters are the clearest studies, 
and are typical of a certain phase of French life. . . ^ The story is fanciful, 
graceful, and piquant, and Reinhart’s illustrations add to its flavor. — Bos- 
ton Journal. 

The peculiar vivacity of the French style is blended with a subtle char- 
acter-analysis that is one of the best things in that line that has been pro- 
duced for a long time. It is one of the most brilliant pieces of literary 
work that has appeared for years, and the interest is sustained almost 
breathlessly. — Boston Evening Traveller. 

The authoress of “ At the Red Glove ” knows how to paint a flesh-and- 
blood womai^, grateful to all the senses, and respectable for the qualities 
of her mind and heart. . . . All in all, “ At the Red Glove ” is one of the 
most delightful of novels since Miss Woolson wrote “For the Major.” — 
N. Y. Times. 

The novel is one of the best things of the summer as a delicious bit of 
entertainment, prepared with perfect art and presented without a sign of 
effort. — N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. 

It is an artistic and agreeable reproduction, in bright colors, of French 
sentiment and feeling. ... It is an abiding relief to read it, after such 
studies as novels in this country fashionably impose. — Boston Olohe. 

A charming little story. . . . The characters are well drawn, with fresh- 
ness and with adequacy of treatment, and the style is crisp and ofttimes 
trenchant. — Boston Advertiser. 

A very pretty story, simply and exquisitely told. . . . The ups and downs 
of the courtship are drawn with a master’s hand. — Cincinnati Inquirer. 

There has been no such pleasant novel of Swiss social life as this. . . . 
The book is one that tourists and summer idlers will do well to add to 
their travelling libraries for the season. — Philadelphia Bulletin. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

fiOr The above work sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States 
or Canada^ on receipt of the price. 


ATLANTIS 


ATLANTIS: THE ANTEDILUVIAN WORLD. By Ig- 

NATius Donnnelly. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, $2 00. 

Mr. Donnelly’s theory is an ingenious one, and is well fortified by argu- 
ments drawn from geology and history, from prehistoric relics, from tra- 
ditions, and from manners, languages, and customs of widely separated 
nations. His theory offers a plausible explanation for many puzzling 
discoveries of the philosophers, and his book will give a fresh impulse to 
historic and prehistoric research. — PhiladelpJda Inquirer, 

Mr. Ignatius Donnelly has written a unique and interesting argument to 
prove that the legend of Atlantis is based upon fact, and that it tells of 
the first and one of the greatest of civilized nations, which a terrible con- 
vulsion of nature obliterated. — Congregationalist^ Boston. 

All of this is very startling, but the author has made out a case which, 
if not convincing, is at least interesting and wonderfully plausible. His 
book shows, throughout, wide reading, logical clearness, and careful 
thought, and the work cannot fail to interest by the vast accumulation of 
out-of-the-way information it contains. — Saturday Evening Gazette^ Boston. 

This is a most remarkable book, entertaining, instructive, and fascinat- 
ing to a degree. ... A book well worth reading. The world will never 
tire of the story of the lost Atlantis and of speculations in regard to it. 
It has been the theme of the poet and philosopher. Now it is brought 
to the test of science. — Brooklyn Union-Argus. 

If any one should get the impression that Mr. Donnelly’s book is a 
foolish one, he will make a great 'mistake. There is an immense amount 
of knowledge accumulated, and some of his views have much more be- 
neath them than notions -in science which have wide prevalence. What- 
ever may be thought of his conclusions, the facts he has assembled with 
regard to the Deluge and the several traditions concerning it, his com- 
parisons of the Old and New World civilizations, his analysis of the my- 
thologies of the Old World, and his discernment and selection of Atlan- 
tean colonies make up a marvellously interesting book. — Christian Advo- 
cate.,^ N. Y. 

It has a strange interest to the general reader as well as to scientific 
students. — Evangelist^ N. Y. 

He must have the credit, however, of giving to the public the most 
original volume of the season. — The Gongregationalist^Bo^iovi. 

The book contains matter food for thought from the first page to the 
last, and its subject is so consequential that, if its major propositions can 
be considered proven, some of the most perplexing problems which the 
history of the human race offers to the investigator will, for the first time 
since the revival of civilization, be put in the way of satisfactory solution. 
^Evening Telegraph,^ Philadelphia. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

The above work sent by mail,, postage prepaid, to any part of the United 'States 
or Canada; on receipt of the price. 


ATLA 


A Story of tlie Lost Island. By Mrs. J. Gregory Smith, 
Author of ^‘Pawn to Sunrise,” etc. pp. 284. 16mo,, 

Extra Cloth, $1 001' 

A new history of the fabled Atlantis, in many particulars far exceeding 
in interest those which have gone before it on the same theme. It is de- 
lightful reading either for a winter evening or a summer’s holiday, and 
ought to have a wide circulation. — A^. Y. Journal of Commerce. 

A tale that reads like one of reality. All who are curious on the sub- 
ject will be fascinated by the fiction, and by its polished style of compo- 
si tion . — Philadelphia Bulletin. 

An extremely clever picture of life as it might have been on the island 
of Atlantis. — Rochester Morning Herald. 

An exceedingly ingenious and clever tale, that has *at once the charm 
of mystery and romance. — N. Y. Graphic. 

The style is full of charm, and the characters are depicted with equal 
skill and vividness. Readers of refined taste will find the book of abound- 
ing interest.— Evening Gazette^ Boston. 

It is like a fairy story in interest and in the oriental magnificence of its 
imagery, while not differing from history in the sober plausibility of the 
narrative presented. It is an exquisite product of the borderland that 
lies between fact and fancy. — N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. 

The merit of the romance is marked ; under the guise of fiction it teaches 
this, that the more we study the civilization of the remote past the more 
wonderful it appears to us to be.-»-A^. Y, Times. 

A very interesting story. The subject is peculiarly adapted to all that 
play of imagination and rich fancy which is calculated to invest this legend 
with so much of charm and interest. Mrs. Smith has employed these 
most excellently in the telling of her story, which the reader will find to 
be a very charming and fascinating one. — Christian at N. Y. 

A romance which has many elements which will charm the reader. 
Mrs. Smith succeeds in producing many striking, eloquent passages, and 
carries on her whole story evenly, and with force and skill. “ Atla ” will 
make the author’s name known to a thousand readers to one who knew 
“Leola” or “Selma.” — Brooklyn Union. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, Hew York. 

Hamper & Brothers will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid, to any 
part of the United States or Canada, 07 i receipt of the price. 


UPLAND AND MEADOW. 

A Poaetquissings Chronicle. By Chaeles C. Abbott, 
M.D. pp. X., 398. 12mo, Ornamental Cloth, $1 50. 

Dr. Abbott studies most delightfully the question of whether birds re- 
main with us during the winter ; whether hibernation is as fixed a habit 
with any creature as is supposed. Then follow studies of the habits of 
marsh -wrens, grakles, red -birds, toads, humming-birds; and an autumn 
diary remarkably full of interest and with many delightfully poetical hab- 
its of expression, together with accounts of conversations with the country 
people so quaint and curious as to give a great personal interest to these 
studies. Any one with the slightest interest in natural history will be 
charmed with this book ; and those who care very little for natural his- 
tory in itself will find so much other matter that whoever and of whatever 
turn of mind takes tip this book will not willingly lay it down. — Christian 
A dvocate^ N. Y. 

We commend this book as inspiring, refreshing, and delightful in its 
record and humor both. — Philadelphia Ledger and Transcript. 

The author has a faculty for using his eyes and ears to excellent advan- 
tage in his rambles over “ Upland and Meadow,” and a very entertaining 
way of recording wLat he sees and hears. ... It is worth reading indeed. 
— The Examiner^ N. Y. 

Here is a modern Thoreau with an imagination the like of which Tho- 
reau did not possess. Things happen to him in the most accommodating 
way, for they manage to give each story'of bird or beast a point. — N. Y. 
Times. 

Delightful reading for students and lovers of out-door nature. . . . Here 
the author discourses with the greatest charm of style about wood and 
stream, marsh-wrens, the spade-foot toad, summer, winter, trumpet-creepers 
and ruby throats, September sunshine, a colony of grakles, the queer little 
dwellers in the water, and countless other things that the ordinary eye 
passes by without notice. . . . The book may be heartily commended to 
every reader of tfste, and to every admirer of graceful and nervous Eng- 
lish. — Satur3»y Evening Gazette., Boston. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

IIauper & Brotuers will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid, to 
any part of the United States or Canada, on receipt of the price. 


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